Beyond the page: Drexel's Hannah Lyon shares the power of storytelling

For Drexel resident Hannah Lyon, writing is more than a career. It’s a way to educate, uplift, and save lives one person at a time by offering perspective and escape during life’s most challenging moments.

Originally from Utah’s Salt Lake Valley, Lyon’s family moved to Drexel about four years ago. She and her husband packed up their two daughters, two dogs, and their camper and traveled 1,800 miles to the small town of fewer than 2,000 people. Moving from a large metropolitan area to a place where she said neighbors are kind and supportive has proved to be just what her family needed.

Lyon shared more details about life as both an author and editor, along with her role as secretary and vice president of Grow With Drexel, a nonprofit organization that works to better the town for generations to come.

WHY DID YOU WANT TO BECOME AN AUTHOR?

I’ve always loved stories, and I always believe that everyone has a story to be able to tell. It’s just a matter of what our chosen medium is to be able to express ourselves. For me, the medium that hit home was when I was a kid reading fantasy books, and I found a lot of answers to my problems, a lot of inspiration for what I needed, ways to survive in kingdoms that didn’t exist, characters I would never meet, and magic I would never be able to cast.

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR TRILOGY

The trilogy is about a kingdom that has been oppressed by essentially an evil dictator for hundreds of years, and what it takes for one man to stand up and say we should fight for the amount of freedom that we feel we deserve. He involves a single mother and her teenage son in a lot of his plans, and he kind of forces everybody within this kingdom to question what kind of struggles we should go through for that amount of freedom we deserve.

WHAT’S YOUR MOST RECENT BOOK ABOUT?

Technically, it is set 11 years before my first book. It’s a story that I never actually intended to write. I had a vision of something that happened before my main trilogy, and it was not even anything to do with my hero himself. It was his best friend.

It was a moment in his life where he was talking with his 11-year-old daughter in a very dark moment for their family, and anyone who’d read the trilogy would know it. The character himself is extremely persuasive. He’s like Mercutio to Romeo, where he kind of steals the show and upstages everyone else.

What’s so interesting and unique about this book was that not even a month after I started writing that, my husband got very sick. My daughters and I almost lost him to a really rare autoimmune disease. He was only 39 years old at the time, and it turned out that a really sad book that I had no intention to write came to me at the moment I needed it to kind of survive an unexpected tragedy of my own.

WHAT’S YOUR ROLE IN GROW WITH DREXEL?

I met the prior president of Grow With Drexel, Kathy, and she just immediately was supportive of me. She invited me to a meeting, and I appreciated how instantly she believed in me. So, I showed up and just got to know the people who were on the board and what they were trying to do.

I was amazed that people could have that much love for their history, for the stories of the people around them, for keeping them alive, not staying stuck in them, but being able to honor them. What new stories can we make? What new opportunities can we create for people? And to do that, it can help to have younger people involved within the organization. So, they got me on board as the secretary, which naturally, as a writer, was really easy to do. Then, Dan said we need a vice president, so I’m able to kind of fulfill both of those roles at the moment.

WHAT DO YOU WANT PEOPLE TO TAKE FROM YOUR WORK?

I think I would kind of wrap back around to that power of storytelling and the value of different people’s stories, and what it would look like for everyone just to find a way to express themselves in a way that inspires or educates or uplifts other people. We need to remind everyone that every story came from a person, whether it’s writing or it’s a song or it’s a movie or it’s a sculpture or a painting. It all came from someone who didn’t give up on that message.

If you feel like you have that story to tell, that there might just be that one person out there who could benefit from it, don’t let it die.