Joyce Dyer

Joyce Dyer is the author of three memoirs, In a Tangled Wood, Gum-Dipped, and Goosetown, and the editor of two collections, Bloodroot: Reflections on Place by Appalachian Women Writers and From Curlers to Chainsaws: Women and Their Machines. She has published essays in newspapers and magazines such as North American Review, The New York Times, and Writer’s Chronicle. She is Professor Emerita of English from Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio, where she held the John S. Kenyon Chair in English and taught creative writing. Recipient of the 1998 Appalachian Book of the Year Award, the 2009 David B. Saunders Award in Creative Nonfiction, the 2016 Independent Book Publisher Gold Medal Award for anthology, and Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards, Dyer recently completed a book about abolitionist John Brown, who grew up in Hudson, Ohio, the town where she also lives. A mix of memoir, biography, American history, and travel writing, Pursuing John Brown: On the Trail of a Radical Abolitionist was published by the University of Akron Press in May of 2022 and named a finalist for an Ohioana Book Award in 2023.