About Natalie Halloway

Natalie Halloway is a contemporary poet and author in her thirties, based in the Mojave Desert, somewhere between the mountains of Utah and the city lights of Las Vegas. Originally from Missouri, she moved more than 1,300 miles west, an experience that transformed both her life and the landscape of her writing.

Natalie has wanted to become a writer for as long as she can remember. She completed her first book at fifteen, though for many years the dream of publishing remained something she carried privately. After spending much of her life feeling unseen or misunderstood, she began writing for others who have experienced that same isolation: those who feel deeply, struggle to explain what they carry, or wonder whether anyone else could possibly understand.

Her poetry is not written to serve as decoration. It is emotionally raw, confessional, and intentionally unguarded. Her work is meant to reach beneath the surface, confronting readers with the feelings they may have tried to bury: anxiety, grief, heartbreak, exhaustion, displacement, and the quiet devastation of beginning again.

Natalie believes poetry creates one of the deepest forms of human connection. Through words, two people who may never meet can recognize the same wound, memory, or fear. A poem can become proof that an experience once believed to be private is shared by someone else.

The desert has become one of the strongest influences on her work. Its beauty is undeniable, but it is never gentle. The relentless sun, oppressive heat, red earth, open highways, and unforgiving silence reflect the realities she writes about: survival without glamour, resilience without applause, and the repeated effort required to rebuild a life.

Her debut collection, All in on Empty (Kismet Chaos Publishing, 2026), was shaped by that landscape. Written amid casino lights, desert roads, storage units, fractured relationships, unfamiliar silence, and personal upheaval, the collection explores what remains when everything familiar has fallen away. Many of the poems were written from within the experience rather than safely after it, preserving the uncertainty, anger, grief, and fragile hope of transformation as it unfolded.

Publishing All in on Empty gave Natalie the courage to continue sharing work that once felt too personal to be seen. She writes for readers navigating the unglamorous parts of being alive, especially those who are still trying, still rebuilding, and still searching for language strong enough to hold what they have survived.

At the heart of Natalie’s work is the belief that even in darkness, words can find the light. They can become lanterns carried across distance, connecting people who once believed they were alone.