Barbara Marie Minney, a native of West Virginia and a seventh generation Appalachian, is a Christian transgender woman, award winning poet, speaker, teaching artist, guest reader/editor, and quiet activist. Her poetry and essays have been widely published and translated into Spanish. Barbara is the author of four poetry collections: If There’s No Heaven (winner of the 2020 Poetry Is Life Book Award and an Akron Beacon Journal Best Northeast Ohio Book of 2020), the Poetic Memoir Chapbook Challenge (2021), Dance Naked With God (2023), and A Woman in Progress (winner of the 2024 American Fiction Award for Poetry Chapbook and an Eric Hoffer Award Nominee). Barbara is a retired attorney and lives in Tallmadge, Ohio, with her wife of over 43 years and a menagerie of stuffed animals.