Meet the Storykeeper
I have been telling stories for almost as long as I have been able to hold a pencil.
Born in Memphis, Tennessee, I spent much of my childhood traveling across the United States and Canada, watching unfamiliar landscapes pass beyond the car window and quietly collecting the people, places, and questions that would later find their way into my writing. By the age of nine, I was reading my stories aloud to classmates during circle time. Before graduating from high school, I had written more than one hundred stories and novels, all by hand. The longest stretched across 2,243 pages, proving early that brevity was never going to be my natural habitat.
My love of history began just as young. At twelve, I began studying the Holocaust, a subject that profoundly shaped both my understanding of human resilience and my belief that stories can keep people from disappearing. That interest eventually led me to visit Auschwitz and Dachau, interview Holocaust survivors, organize educational events, and write novels rooted in historical memory.
Today, I write emotionally immersive fiction about survival, silence, belonging, and the complicated ways people carry one another through darkness. My books often explore communities shaped by secrets, characters who have been overlooked or misunderstood, and the thin but stubborn thread of hope that survives even when a life does not unfold neatly.
My novels include The Character, Broken, Dance for Me, River’s Rowan, Remember the Nightingale, Whisperroot, and Echoes of a Wild Girl’s Drum, along with numerous other works of historical, literary, and character-driven fiction. Though my stories travel through different eras, countries, cultures, and imagined worlds, they are united by one central concern: what happens inside a person when the world has failed to protect them, and what becomes possible when someone finally chooses to see them?
In Whisperroot, two sisters grow up in a town where silence has become a kind of law and the forest remembers what the people would rather forget. In Echoes of a Wild Girl’s Drum, a girl condemned by her village finds refuge in the forest and in the heart of the boy who once interrupted her death sentence with the beat of a drum. Both novels reflect my fascination with collective memory, moral courage, complicity, and the emotional lives of people history might otherwise reduce to a footnote.
I am also a longtime survivor advocate. For more than twenty years, I have volunteered with the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, supporting survivors through the National Sexual Assault Hotline. I have served as a medical accompaniment volunteer, a Guardian ad Litem, a member of the RAINN Speakers Bureau, and a certified trauma-informed life coach. My advocacy and my fiction are deeply connected by the same conviction: being witnessed matters. Being believed matters. A story told with honesty can become a hand reaching through the dark.
I do not write simple stories about becoming fearless. I write about people who remain afraid and still act, who love imperfectly, who survive unevenly, and who discover that healing is rarely a straight road. My characters may be wounded, furious, tender, strange, hopeful, or haunted. Often, they are all of those things before breakfast.
Although I now live in Florida, I still consider the Nashville area home. When I am not writing, researching an obscure historical event, rearranging an imaginary village, or arguing with a fictional character who has refused to follow the outline, I enjoy traveling, spending time with my two daughters, and connecting with readers who believe stories can do more than entertain.
For me, storytelling is both an art and an act of remembrance. It is a way of asking difficult questions without insisting upon easy answers. Most of all, it is an invitation: to enter someone else’s world, stay long enough to understand what they carry, and leave seeing humanity a little differently.


Tiffini Is:
- Certified as a MAP (certified medical accompaniment person)
- Certified as a GAL (Guardian ad Litem) serving children in dependency care
- Compassion-focused, trauma-informed coach by Soul Institute
- Trauma-Informed Certified Coach by International Practitioners of Holistic Medicine
- Certified in breathwork
- Volunteer as a hotline specialist for RAINN
- Member of the RAINN Speaker Bureau
- Member of the Board of Directors for ANA’s Friends
- Creator of the HERO and ashRISE workshops for survivors
- Author of 16 Published Books
- Facilitator of the online book club, Chapter Chats
Welcome to Stories That Matters!


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Tiffini, you have, as Jerry Jenkins would say, “Captured the theater of my mind.” I can’t wait to read more of your work, I’m already a fan. Thank you for your words and your ability to draw the reader into your moment. Your gifts are more than you even realize.
Kathleen, thank you so much for the encouraging words. It really does mean so much!
I am so pleased to have stumbled across your blog! You are a gifted writer, able to convey emotion convincingly.
Your poems about the experiences of Jews during Hitler’s reign of terror are moving. I have known two people who lived in Europe during that period. One lady, very kind to me, moved to the US after the war; she never accepted what her countrymen did – and yet, to me, a young girl, she was kindness itself. It is hard to understand how one can be blind about something like this, and still kind and loving to a young girl in another time, another country.
Human beings are remarkable in their ability to see only what they wish to see.
The other lady, I did not really know, but only know of her through stories of her daughter-in-law. Her entire family was murdered in the death camps. She was liberated at the end of the war, married a man who experienced the same, and they moved to America in the 1950s, living fairly ordinary lives. For many years, she toured city schools, speaking of the horrors that she and people like her endured.
People are also remarkable for the things they can survive.
Thank you for your lovely, compelling poems. I look forward to visiting your blog often.
Hi! Thank you for such a thoughtful response! Yes, the Holocaust was an unbelievable time in history, full of both terror and resilience. I’ve been fortunate to have spoken with two different survivors, who both had very different experiences, but the one thing that they share is the fear and sadness.
People -do- indeed see what they want to see and sometimes it is too hard to accept when evil exists right before our eyes.
These poems were written when I was in the 10th grade, so they are quite old! But I’m glad to hear they convey how much emotion I feel toward the Holocaust and it’s survivors/victims!
I appreciate your support and will be looking over your blog this morning!
🙂
Thanks for responding. Hope you enjoy your visit to my blog. 🙂
I nominated you for the versatile blogger award! Best wishes.
The Versatile Blogger Award acceptance rules:
1). Thank the person who nominated you
2). Link back to their blog
3). Nominate up to 15 people for the award (let them know they have been nominated)
4). Share seven things about yourself
Thank you! How kind! 🙂
Where have you been???? I hope all is well!!!! I have a passage on my blog that you may want to read and give feed back on. It’s called “Creating A wonderland”!!!! Thought about you after I posted this.
Hey! I’ve written 2 blogs this week– the last one, “Gather 2 or 3” explains current circumstances pretty well. I will definitely take a look at the blog–my interest is piqued! 🙂
As you were writing this I was reading your piece. I will comment, been reading on the go!!!! I wanted to make sure things were good in your neck of the woods!!!!
Happy Mother’s day tiffini!!!! I have enjoy our back and forwards and your love for your children is apparent; thanks for being an example!!!!
Thank you! That is super sweet, and very thoughtful of you! I too have enjoyed conversing with someone as talented, optimistic and expressive as yourself! 🙂
It was my pleasure….i guess talent knows talent!!!! You deserve a great life; Our heart are meant to be open and we should always surround ourselves with people that deserve our openness!!!!
You are a lovely person, Tiffini. And your daughters are so beautiful. 🙂