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Dana Wildsmith
A few years ago the manager of Malaprops Books in Asheville, North Carolina, introduced poet and essayist Dana Wildsmith to a group assembled to hear her read by saying, “Dana writes about death and poverty”. “Well, maybe”, Wildsmith countered, “But I also write about love and dogs, which may actually be the same subject”. Wildsmith’s books do keep their focus centered on the basic issues of life: how money or the lack of it shapes the choices we make, how to best love the people (and dogs) in our lives, and how to most gracefully allow our loved ones exit from life when their time comes. Wildsmith writes about the elemental focuses of our lives, which may be the reason her poetry has proved so popular: her first chapbook, Alchemy, sold out its first printing within a matter of months—an almost unheard-of event in the world of small poetry presses. Her subsequent poetry collections, Annie and Our Bodies Remember, as well as an audio collection, Choices, have also been so well-received that one farmer keeps his copy of Our Bodies Remember in the cab of his tractor, handy to thumb through while he’s taking a break. At recent workshops taught by Wildsmith, attendees have come asking for “those new poems”, which are included in the collection One Good Hand, now available from Iris Press. Wildsmith admits to valuing most the love of her readers and her students, but she’s not unmindful of the more formal honors she has received. She has served as Writer-In-Residence for Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming, the Fitton Arts Center in Hamilton, Ohio and The Island Institute in Sitka, Alaska. She has twice been an Associate artist at The Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna, Florida, has been a resident at Hedgebrook Writers Colony, and has been a Poetry Fellow with The South Carolina Academy of Authors. The University Press of Kentucky included Wildsmith in its highly acclaimed anthology, Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia, and her work appears in other anthologies. Her poems and essays have appeared in many journals and magazines, including Yankee, The Kentucky Poetry Review, The Asheville Poetry Review, Calliope, The Chattahoochee Review, and others. She is a popular teacher of writing, whose classes regularly are standing-room only. She has taught in venues as wildly varying as Keet Gooshi Heen Elementary School in Alaska, to John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina, to her day job (actually it happens in the evenings) as an English Literacy Instructor to adult non-native English speakers at Lanier Technical College. Additionally, Dana is a member of the eight-teacher team appointed by the Center for Adult English Language Acquisition to train other English Literacy Instructors throughout the state of Georgia. Wildsmith lives with two generations of her family, two dogs and uncounted cats on a 120+ year-old family farm in Bethlehem, Georgia. Her current writing project is a nonfiction work based on her life on this land which her family is trying to keep whole and healthy in the midst of rampant development from nearby Atlanta.
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