Deena Kaye Rose is a Nashville songwriting legend. She has written songs for some of country’s most renowned stars like Johnny Cash, Jerry Reed, John Denver and wrote the theme song to the all-time American classic movie, Smokey and the Bandit.

Deena Kaye Rose has done it all, but she did much of it as a male writer with a feminine soul living inside, yearning to come out.

In Deena Kaye Rose’s new book, Some Days Are Diamonds, she chronicles the best and worst times of living the raucous and crazy musician life all the while knowing that  she was suppressing her true feminine self.

Today Deena is a transgender woman and activist, sharing the history of her journey in performances and lectures   around the country.  She is letting trans persons know they are not alone.

Deena’s  hope is that her tale of growing up knowing she was a transgender woman in a time  when those topics were considered either taboo or nonexistent in the Bible Belt of the United States, may add a positive note to the transgender conversation.   Even a dude writing songs in Nashville is not immune to the state of being transgender.