Hayden is originally from the Illinois elbow of St. Louis, MO. She earned an A.A. in Journalism, a B.A. with double major in Psychology and Philosophy, graduating Summa Cum Laude, and a M.A. in Comparative Religions from Miami University (Thesis: Protecting Native American Sacred Lands). She also is a certified Integral Yoga Hatha and Meditation teacher. A teaching assistantship is what brought her to Ohio, where she stayed, now a Buckeye for over 25 years.
She is a tenured Full Professor of Humanities, Philosophy, and Religions with emphasis/research areas in Indigenous, Eastern, and Environmental Studies. In 2022, her environmental ethics chapter, Saunter Like Muir: Experience Projects in Environmental Ethics was published by Routledge in the textbook Eco pedagogies: Practical Approaches to Experiential Learning. Writing poetry has always been her passion and she is extremely honored to have served four years as the Poet Laureate for Sinclair College (2021-2025).
She received the River Heron Editors’ Choice Poetry Prize for the poem, The Faery Bridges (2023) and is a Pushcart Prize nominee for “Watching Ukraine.” Hayden has also received several pedagogy awards, including the SOCHE Excellence Award (2017), Humanities Professor of the Year (2019), Chicago Interfaith Core Award (2019), and the prestigious League for Innovation Teaching Excellence Award (2020).
Her poems and prose have been featured in Gyroscope Review, Slipstream, Anti-Heroin Chic, Rowayat International, Flora Fiction, Yellow Arrow Publishing, Willows Wept Review, Fevers of the Mind, Devil’s Party Press, Loud Coffee Press, Tangled Locks Journal, Paradox, Flights Literary Journal, River Heron Review, Syncopation Literary Journal as well as several anthologies including New Generation Beats, Dead of Winter, and Uncensored Ink.
Hayden’s debut poetry collection is called American Saunter, inspired by her backpacking and traveling across the U.S.
The manuscript was chosen as a semi-finalist for The Birdy Poetry Prize in 2023 and is published by FlowerSong Press (2024).
How to Tie Tobacco, a chapbook about her great/grandmothers’ wisdom, released May 27th, 2025 by Wild Ink Publishing.
Additionally, Hayden is finishing up a manuscript inspired by her European travels, called Old World Wings: Poems of Europe, which will also release by Wild Ink Publishing in late 2025.
During the pandemic, she and her family worked on bringing the stories of their farm rescues to print, resulting in the all ages book, Windy Chicken Farm Animal Rescue. Told from each of the rescues’ perspectives, each story inspires and gives testimony to their strong belief that every pet (and everyone) deserves a second chance at life.
Stay tuned for updates!
WINDY CHicken Poet 