Wilma Dykeman

The prolific writer and activist Wilma Dykeman concluded in her 1985 commencement speech at University of North Carolina Asheville, “And so I would ask you to seek the freedom of discipline and to seek the power of your imagination to enter into other lives for meaning. Through these two, achieve your own freedom and your own development to the highest potential, which is indeed the challenge for all of us.” Her words of advice to the graduating class reflect her own life story and the accomplishments that she earned. In Wilma Dykeman is found the model of discipline channeled through imagination.

 

As a native of the Southern Appalachians, Dykeman exuded the spirit of the mountains, celebrating the traditions of the region while delicately interweaving a new set of standards for future creators. Through numerous contributions to the literary tradition of Appalachia, Wilma Dykeman’s complex ecological and sociological perspective highlighted previously neglected aspects of the human narrative. Demanding a more realistic and comprehensive approach to storytelling, Dykeman was a trailblazer in the fiction and non-fiction world. Her oral and written message has always been simple: because all things on Earth are connected, preservation and diversity are essential to maintaining the vitality of historical narrative.