Joyce Dyer is director of writing and professor of English at Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio, where she teaches courses in literature and creative writing. Dyer is the author of two books, The Awakening: A Novel of Beginnings and In a Tangled Wood: An Alzheimer's Journey, and the editor of Bloodroot: Reflections on Place by Appalachian Women Writers. Dyer has published over a hundred essays in magazines such as North American Review and High Plains Literary Review. She has won numerous awards for her writing, including a 1997 Individual Artist Fellowship from the Ohio Arts Council and the 1998 Appalachian Book of the Year Award.