Wyoming-born Paden Malachi is a queer writer and artist whose work braids high-plains landscapes, Mormon afterlives, and masculinity in both its tender and brutal forms. Raised on hymns and country radio under big western skies, he writes unapologetically about faith, love, and the long, stubborn work of coming home to himself. His in-progress debut manuscript, Earthtones, is a lyric-hybrid memoir in poetry and essays about the year Wyoming taught him fear and the fault lines that still shape his life. On the page, his work is in conversation with writers like Mary Oliver, Ocean Vuong, Maggie Nelson, Kaveh Akbar, and Saeed Jones—voices that blur the boundaries between poetry, prayer, and memoir.

Before turning his focus more fully to writing, Paden spent years as an independent singer-songwriter, releasing a gospel album and later a country-pop single rooted in the sounds of his childhood. Echoes of his musical influences—Dolly Parton, Brad Paisley, Kacey Musgraves, Fancy Hagood—still hum underneath his prose and poems, shaping his sense of storytelling and tone.

He still serves in the military and lives in the Washington, D.C. area with his partner, where he is currently completing Earthtones and building a life that reads—and, occasionally, sounds—like home.

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