“About Me” — Tekoa Manning

Before I became a writer, I was a storyteller. As a child, I spent hours in my bedroom weaving imaginative tales for an invisible audience. My siblings or parents would walk in, and embarrassed, I’d pretend I hadn’t just recited an entire play of my own making.

I was an awkward child who loathed school. Teachers and principals often dragged me down hallways to get me to my classroom. I was the girl hiding in the corner or under the bed when company came—the child with huge eyes, a massive forehead, pigeon toes, and a vivid make-believe world that felt far safer than real life.

In fifth grade, something awakened in me.

I was assigned to write a poem about spring, and I had never been so excited about homework. My aunt Sophia, a poet who wrote a weekly column for her local paper in Ann Arbor, often shared her work during visits to our home in Kentucky. Many of my mother’s family members were poets and songwriters who could captivate listeners for hours. Inspired by them, I took notepaper outside, studied the awakening earth, and wrote my poem beneath a tree.

The next afternoon, I was called to the principal’s office. My English teacher and my mother were waiting. The teacher questioned where I had “gotten” the poem, wondering aloud if Emily Dickinson had written it. I insisted it was mine, but she repeatedly accused me of plagiarism—a word far too sophisticated for a little girl. Finally, she looked at my mother and said, “We know Bonnie didn’t write this, and we will find out who did.”

The joy I’d felt while writing evaporated, replaced by shame.

I stopped writing.

But soon after, I began devouring books. Anything I could get my hands on—S.E. Hinton, Mary Norton, Harper Lee, Paul Zindel, Judy Blume, Steinbeck, Dickens, Stephen King. I scoured thrift stores for novels. I loved biographies, the classics, and I had read the Bible since I first learned to read. Stories became my refuge and quiet education.

Years later, in 2006, my life unraveled. I became severely ill, had to drop out of college, quit my job, cash in my 401(k), and eventually became homeless for a year. While in college, however, I had met an English professor with a Ph.D. in literature who told me I had a gift. Although still wounded from childhood rejection, she persuaded me to enter a campus writing contest—and to my surprise, I won. Jo still encourages me to this day.

Through her belief in me, I realized I didn’t need a degree to be a writer.

I had been born one.

I wrote my first novel, Polishing Jade, as a high school dropout with an abusive past and a longing to tell a story. In the late 1980s, using only a spiral notebook and an ink pen, the bones of Jade were birthed. My book Walter the Homeless Man began the same way—the first 100 pages written long before I ever experienced homelessness myself. By 2008, I, like Walter, had lost everything.

During that time, while couch surfing with a borrowed laptop, I kept writing. I researched. I journaled. I created worlds. And I have never stopped.

Each genre carries its own unique flavor.

Words—wondrous words—became my lifeline.

Whatever you find that you love doing, do it with all your might: your sewing machine, your garden dirt, your recipes, your jewelry, your paintbrush—your uniquely personal gifts.

Blessings,

Tekoa Manning