Morgan Barrett
Morgan is a Millennial mom to twins and a person living with cystic fibrosis (CF). Morgan writes reflective personal essays, poetry and works of fiction that make people feel less alone in their experience of being human. She is also a storytelling family photographer in her community, documenting all phases of life through honest imagery. She is interested in exploring how our pasts influence who we become.
The trajectory of Morgan’s life was dramatically altered when she began taking the modulator therapy called Trikafta in 2019; She quickly went from not being expected to live past forty to gaining a near-normal life expectancy and becoming a mother to healthy twins amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Morgan graduated from Kansas State University in 2014 with a Bachelor of Arts in Advertising. She is a 2026 Mid-America Arts Alliance Artist INC Fellow, and her writing has been published by Hello America Lit and FLARE Magazine. She lives outside of Lawrence, Kansas with her husband and kids.
Morgan is writing her first novel.
Published Work
Hello America Lit
"I'll Remember"
I wrote this poem after watching the brutal murder of Alex Pretti by ICE agents on my phone. The past ten years of Trumpism and America’s decline into fascism have made me ask myself, again and again: How? How can so many people follow this ideology? How can so many people deny what’s right in front of them, instead choosing to believe the false narratives perpetuated by known liars? How are so many of them people that I have known for decades? My lifelong friends, my family members, people I thought to be kind, compassionate, reasonable? This poem isn’t the product of one instance of silence in the face of state-sanctioned violence; it is the product of ten years of silence and indifference when it mattered most to give a shit. I’m tired of avoiding knowing what I know: That so many of the people I have loved have been complicit in green-lighting policies, narratives, and people in power who are in direct opposition to basic human decency for all. I’ll remember.
FLARE Magazine
"Trikafta Takes Effect"
Reclined in the dentist’s chair, the taste of nitrile gloves in my mouth, my muscles contracted as my lungs tried to force out a phlegmy cough. I’m a practiced cough-suppressor, though, so I expertly stop the reflex, swallowing the phlegm before it can make it up and out of my throat.
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The hygienist’s gaze darted up from my teeth to my eyes, questioning. “You good?”...