Biography
Wilma Dykeman, born in Asheville, North Carolina, has lived her entire life near the banks of the famous French Broad River that winds through the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. She was an only child born to a family with its roots in these mountains since the seventeen hundreds. Writing throughout her young life, Dykeman attended Biltmore Junior College in Asheville, and later left the mountains to pursue a bachelor's degree in speech at Northwestern University.
After she graduated, she met her soon-to-be husband James R. Stokely of Newport, Tennessee, a poet and nonfiction writer. Dykeman and her husband lived in both Asheville and Newport and collaborated on several books dealing with race issues in the South: Neither Black Nor White (1957), a personal view of integration in the South; Seeds of Southern Change (1976); and Prophet of Plenty (1966) about the life of Will W. Alexander, a Southern leader who worked for racial peace and justice. Dykeman's husband died in 1977.
Dykeman began writing short stories and later began writing articles for magazines such as Harper's, New York Times Magazine, and Reader's Digest. To date, she has published sixteen books. The French Broad (1955), which she completed in one year, is a lifetime look at life on the French Broad River. Her histories, biographies, and legends bring readers into the mountains that she loves so dearly.
Wilma Dykeman has received many awards including the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Trophy, a Senior Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Chicago Friends of the American Writers Award, and the 1985 North Carolina Award for Literature. She is currently, and has been since 1981, the honorary Historian of the State of Tennessee. She has taught courses for over twenty years at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and is a prized lecturer around the South.
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