Heather Brown Barrett is an award-winning poet and writer in southeastern Virginia. She mothers her young son and contemplates life, the universe, and everything with her writer husband. She is a Cherokee Nation citizen, the current Membership Chair of The Poetry Society of Virginia, a member of The Muse Writers Center, and a former board member of Hampton Roads Writers.
Her work has appeared in Literary Mama, The Ekphrastic Review, Yellow Arrow Journal, formidable Woman sanctuary, Black Bough Poetry, OyeDrum, and elsewhere, and has been nominated for Best of the Net. Her poetry is featured in the global TELEPHONE exhibition, was previously featured on the Dahlgren Railroad Heritage Trail as part of The Poetry Society of Virginia’s Poetry on the Trail project, and previously in the Suffolk Center for Cultural Arts Everyone Has a Story exhibit.
Much of her work is influenced by themes and dualities of motherhood, modes of forgiveness and grace, the structures of curiosity, time, and attention, and the types of subjects that plague most poets, like death, grocery stores, and birds.
She’s the author of Water in Every Room (Kelsay Books 2025), a collection of poems embodying the fluctuations of emotion and form in new motherhood.
Instagram and Substack: @heatherbrownbarrett