Nina Owen was born in west Tennessee in 1966. She grew up in a small town with a large family—four siblings and her parents. From early childhood, Nina loved books and was an avid reader. She attended the University of Memphis, where she studied journalism and worked on the university newspaper. After college, Nina was unable to find a paying job in her chosen field of newspaper journalism and—after floundering a bit—found herself working as a sales manager at a Holiday Inn in Memphis, Tennessee. Although falling into a hotel sales and operations career was happenstance, this would become Nina’s livelihood for almost thirty years.
In 1993, Nina moved to Atlanta, Georgia, and married Jeff Owen. Jeff and Nina had a son, Sam, in 1995, a daughter, Maggie, in 2000, and a daughter, Claire, in 2003. Even with the busyness of raising a young family, Jeff and Nina were able to travel both alone and with their children to places such as Costa Rica, the Leeward Islands, France, Yosemite, San Francisco, Washington DC, and New York City. Both Nina and Jeff felt that expanding their children’s minds through travel was integral to their intellectual and social development.
Nina never lost her love of writing. At any opportunity, she would utilize her writing skills with her job and nonprofit organizations. When time allowed, Nina journaled. It was not until 2016, however, when she lost her son to suicide that this journaling became an important lifeline to surviving a mother’s worst tragedy.
Nina’s journals—along with her son Sam’s writing—became the jumping off point of a narrative nonfiction memoir, her first published book, Throwing It All Away. The book was published in September 2020 by the publisher, Southern Fried Karma.
For Nina, the real joy of writing is having the opportunity to touch readers with her words. Beyond telling the story of Sam, Nina hopes the book will lead to conversations among counselors and patients and parents, resulting in one less death by suicide.