Her Story
About Hannah
Hannah Troy is a writer and educator based in the Pittsburgh region. She earned her undergraduate degree in English and Education before pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at Chatham University, where her fiction thesis received the Best Thesis in Fiction Award. After several years working in retail, tech, and mortgage, Troy returned to her passion for writing and teaching in her early 30s, completing her MFA program and beginning to teach at Duquesne University, Chatham University, and a special creative school in the Pittsburgh public school system. She now teaches creative writing to 6th through 8th grade students and first-year writing courses at the university level while dedicating evenings and weekends to her personal writing and submissions in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Troy attributes her drive to her own stubbornness, a desire to prove and challenge herself, and the need for an outlet for her creativity, which the graduate program provided. She advises young women entering the field to listen to their own instincts when making life decisions despite outside voices. One of the biggest challenges she identifies in her field is balancing the use of AI in academic writing with the need for self-generated work.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Hannah
01What do you attribute your success to?
It's a bit of my own stubbornness and a desire to prove myself and challenge myself. Ultimately my biggest drive was the creativity that was boiling up inside of me that I needed to get an outlet for, and I knew that I would give myself the structure and motivation with a graduate program. Being a teacher and giving that back to other people constantly continues to motivate me.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
My biggest advice would be to listen to yourself. There are a lot of outside voices that impacted me and the decisions I made for myself at a young age. When making huge life decisions, you are the first person that should be making them. When I decided to go back to school as a woman in her 30s, there was a lot of fear and trepidation, but I knew ultimately that for myself I needed to do that in order to feel some fulfillment and joy within my life. There will always be some naysayers, but taking that time to look internally and feel that confidence within your own gut is really important.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The use of AI and a reliance on that, especially for teaching college students doing academic writing. There's a lot of heavy AI usage within academia. Finding a balance and battling when we really need to be using our own generation versus a computer generation, while still accepting that it is going to be within their academic world. Balancing that and advocating for self-generated work has been a hurdle.
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