Jeanne Bryner of Warren, Ohio, brings a nurse’s sense of compassion and a poet’s eye for nuance to her evocative writing that captures the rhythm of everyday events and explores the inner emotional response to life.

Bryner made a number of appearances at West Liberty University under the auspices of the institution’s Hughes Lecture Series last week. During her residency, she presented a program for Lunch With Books at the Ohio County Public Library in Wheeling Tuesday, March 24.

Dr. Peter Staffel, chair of the Hughes Lecture Series, introduced Bryner at the library and noted she has pursued a first career as a nurse while embarking upon a long, successful career as a writer. He said Bryner has an “extremely impressive” portfolio, with a “staggering” number of poems and stories published in several publications.

“Some of her works have been turned into dramatic presentations. Some of her works have been set to dance,” Staffel said.

Bryner said she started writing a lot when she began a nursing diploma program in 1976. At age 38, she went back to college at a regional campus. “I was hungry for stories and poetry,” she recalled.

A registered nurse, she is a graduate of Trumbull Memorial Hospital’s School of Nursing and Kent State University’s Honors College.

Upon entering Kent State, Bryner said she took “a clutch of poems” to English professor Vivian H. Pemberton, who was a Hart Crane scholar. After reading Bryner’s work, Pemberton declared, “You are a poet.”

“That was a validation,” Bryner said, adding, “Thank God, I had all these wonderful mentors in my life.”

While taking a class with Pemberton, one of Bryner’s poems won the highest award on Kent State’s Trumbull campus. “That totally changed my life,” she said.

Bryner won a scholarship to an international poetry festival in Arizona. She felt intimidated by the prospect of meeting renowned poets, but she found that “they were just wonderful. They were just human beings. It was wonderful. It really changed my life,” she said.

That fall, she took a “life-changing” class with poet-in-residence Maggie Anderson, who had a residency in Marshall County many years ago. The poet agreed to read a manuscript that Bryner had written over the summer. “To be my mentor and teacher and also be from Appalachia, that’s just huge,” Bryner said of Anderson.

Bryner took undergraduate courses and graduate workshops in poetry and fiction. She said it took 10 years to earn her degree while working 12-hour shifts in a hospital emergency room and tending to her family.

At the library, Bryner read a short story, “Foxglove Canyon,” from her book, “Eclipse.” Set at the Shady Rest Nursing Home in the Blue Ridge Mountains, the story is narrated by a woman who has been a registered nurse for 40 years. Reflecting on what nurses have to tell their patients or “clients,” the narrator observed, “There are a million ways to waltz around the truth.”

After reading the story, the author remarked, “I don’t know what kind of life we have if we don’t have hope.”

Bryner turned the story into a play that she presented at a conference, Understanding Our Patients’ Lives, in Akron. “I wanted to take this story and make it into a play because it’s about the layers of life,” she said. “It is a universal truth that is exposed when we write deeply.”

The play was well received, getting a standing ovation at the conference. “I learned a lot more about my characters when I turned it into a play,” she said, adding, “We all have young people within us. I wanted that representation on the stage. I don’t want anyone going through this world without hope.”

Bryner also read a poem, “Bed Bath,” from a 2012 book, and “Mercy,” a poem about a woman whose legs were broken in a hit-and-run accident. “I know in my own life the healing power of language,” she commented after reading those selections. “We have evidence-based research that there is a healing power to journaling.”

She concluded the reading with a poem titled “Breast Cancer Survivor Writing Workshop on Thursday Night at Burger King,” based on an actual experience she had while leading a group. “I really learned a lot with those women in this workshop,” she said.

In response to a question from the audience, Bryner said that “there’s always a kernel” of her own experience in her work. “There’s truth in all fiction, of course,” she remarked.

Bryner, who writes in her journal every day, has a poetry manuscript circulating and three more books she would like to finish. She has six stories done for a collection, “but that’s not nearly enough,” she said. She also is working on a book about the first black nurse hired in Trumbull County, Ohio.

Her latest book is “Early Farming Women,” about the earliest people on earth. Her books include “No Matter How Many Windows,” “Tenderly Lift Me,” “The Poetry of Nursing,” “Breathless,” “Blind Horse,” “The Wedding of Miss Meredith Mouse” and “Smoke,” which received an American Journal of Nursing 2012 book of the year award.

She has received writing fellowships from Bucknell University, the Ohio Arts Council (in 1997 and 2007) and Vermont Studio Center.