The Story of Heddy Edwards
(The one you won’t find in a bite-sized bio.)
Heddy Edwards is consumed by thoughts of the rich inner worlds we all harbor, the ones we foster and cultivate during the golden-silent moments of our days. In the rooms of our mind—whether corner libraries by the sea or shag-carpeted music rooms—are parts of a private world that lives only in the talismans we collect, with which we adorn our material worlds. So much of us lives in the books on our shelves, the vinyl near our record players, the art hanging on our walls, the scribbles in our notebooks, and the trinkets in our bedrooms. This ethereal realm is where her art resides.
Heddy is a singer-songwriter, music producer, and poet whose greatest aspiration is to extricate her inner world so that it may be immortalized in the outer world, as art that will outlive herself and withstand time. Raised as an only child in the Southwest suburbs of Chicago, Heddy spent the majority of her days and nights daydreaming about art, love, and magic. From a young age, her mother instilled in her a near-lexical knowledge of music from all genres and eras, as well as her penchant for dance, visual art, poetry, prose, and astrology. Her father gifted her the burning drive and confidence to set her dreams into motion. At the age of four, Heddy was enrolled in dance classes, a medium in which she would train for 16 years. This foundation—all at once physical, mental, and artistic in nature—still comprises the way she experiences music, influencing her personal compositions. Through dance, she was also inspired to pursue piano, which became her instrument of choice.
Although she grew up infatuated with music and poetry, often making up little songs and rhymes, she did not write her first full-length song until she took guitar classes in school at the age of 16. After this, she graduated from high school and, due to her love of literature and service, pursued an English and political science degree at a Midwestern college. Later, after working in the industry for several years, she would pursue a master’s degree in public policy near her home in northern Virginia, where she currently resides with her husband and their two rescue dogs.
She first started posting poetry to Instagram in 2014, before opening an account devoted to her writing in 2018. She was then published in a small-press anthology and a local zine, prior to her literary journal debut in 2023.
During the pandemic, and following a startling car accident (luckily no one was harmed), her undiagnosed mental health issues reached a concerning peak; at the apex of the reckoning was a quiet beckoning to pursue the calling she had set aside out of fear and uncertainty. In 2020, Heddy built a small home music studio and took online music production courses, resolving to write her first song in nearly a decade.
In 2021, she released her first-ever song on streaming services, “white lightning,” followed by two more, “cherry picker” and “the moon below (and fall)” in 2022. In 2023, she made her literary journal debut with the publication of her piece “The Static and the Wink” in Sky Island Journal (Issue 23, Winter 2023). She is elated that she has finally started to fulfill the deepest desire both innate and inherent to her younger self: to channel her inner world into earthly existence, and to share it in a way that speaks to the inner worlds of others. Most of all, Heddy is thrilled that this is only the beginning.