Joyce Dyer - Background

Background

Joyce Coyne (Dyer) was born in Akron, Ohio, during the summer of 1947. Her father, Thomas Coyne, was a supervisor for the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, and his experiences inspired Dyer to write Gum-Dipped: A Daughter Remembers Rubber Town, the 2004 required summer reading selection for the University of Akron and 2005 required reading for Hiram College. Dyer’s mother was a clerk for the Board of Education in Akron. Dyer graduated with a B.A. in English from Wittenberg University and a Ph.D. in English from Kent State University. She has taught at Lake Forest College in Illinois and Western Reserve Academy and Hiram College in Ohio. In addition to publishing five books, she is the author of numerous literary essays that have appeared in magazines such as North American Review, cream city review, and High Plains Literary Review and in anthologies such as After the Bell, Body Outlaws, We All Live Downstream, What's Normal?, and Educating the Imagination. She has read and lectured at St. Mary's College of Maryland, the Mercantile Library in Cincinnati, Otterbein College, Mount Union College, Appalachian State University, Wittenberg University, and the Great Lakes Writers Festival in Sheboygan, Wisconsin (2011) and served on staff at 826michigan Writers Conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan (2011), the Antioch Writers' Workshop in Yellow Springs, Ohio, the Appalachian Writers Workshop in Hindman, Kentucky, the Wright State University Institute on Writing and Teaching in Dayton, Ohio, and the Highland Summer Conference in Radford, Virginia. She recently served as visiting writer in creative nonfiction for the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (NEOMFA). Dyer is currently working on two collections of essays and a book about John Brown. She lives in the Ohio Western Reserve with her husband, Daniel Osborn Dyer, a book reviewer and teacher.