Brenda Taylor-Hines is a Cleveland Public School graduate. She began her career as a social worker after completing her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Case Western Reserve University. Ms. Taylor-Hines worked in the field of addiction with chronic homeless alcoholics and heroin addicts before transitioning to prevention, working with children, youth and young adults. She used journaling as a tool to write down her thoughts and feelings about situations and events. The journal entries were about breakups, harassment, church conflicts, gang observations and celebrated family successes. Metaphors describe people and their behaviors. These entries were developed into poems in Conversation Pieces. Ms. Taylor-Hines encouraged elementary school aged children at a Charter School to write it out instead of reacting in anger, rage or violence. There is power in the pen." In 1994, she compiled her words, stories and events into a collection of poems called Conversation Piece that was self-published and shared with family and friends. Now thirty years later, Conversation Pieces is being published by Xlibris to a larger market.