Joyce Dyer (born Joyce Coyne) is a U.S. writer of nonfiction and former university professor at Hiram College. Born in Akron, Ohio, many of Dyer's works focus on her family and the Ohio experience.

Life

Joyce (Coyne) Dyer was born in Akron, Ohio. Her father, Thomas William Coyne, was a supervisor for the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company and her mother clerked for the Akron

Board of Education A board of education, school committee or school board is the board of directors or board of trustees of a school, local school district or an equivalent institution. The elected council determines the educational policy in a small regional are ...

. Dyer graduated from Wittenberg University (in Springfield, Ohio) with a BA in English and earned a

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in English from Kent State University. After completing her PhD, Dyer taught English at Lake Forest College, Western Reserve Academy, and then Hiram College, where she was the first director of the Lindsay-Crane Center for Writing and Literature and held the John S. Kenyon Chair in English for many years. , she was professor emerita at Hiram. Joyce married fellow writer and educator Daniel Osborn Dyer.

Work

Dyer has written six nonfiction books, as well as numerous essays for literary periodicals. Dyer has also edited two collections of essays, ''Bloodroot: Reflections on Place by Appalachian Women Writers'' and ''From Curlers to Chainsaws: Women and Their Machines.'' Dyer's first book, ''The Awakening: A Novel of Beginnings'', was an academic study of late-19^th-century author Kate Chopin. She then turned to memoirs, writing ''In a Tangled Wood: An Alzheimer's Journey'' about her mother's last years. Her father's experiences at Firestone Tire and Rubber Company inspired Dyer to write ''Gum-Dipped: A Daughter Remembers Rubber Town'', a commercial success. ''Gum-Dipped'' attempts to reconstruct the centrality of the

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to midcentury Akron, Ohio through Dyer's relationship to her father. Dyer then wrote a prequel, ''Goosetown: Reconstructing an Akron Neighborhood'', which describes Dyer's early childhood in Old Wolf Ledge (also called "Goosetown", because of the backyard geese many local German immigrant families kept). Finally, from 2011-2021, Dyer wrote ''Pursuing John Brown: On the Trail of a Radical Abolitionist'', a mix of memoir, biography, public history, and travel writing that analyzes the troubling life of its eponymous figure.

Personal memoirs

*(1996) ''In a Tangled Wood: An Alzheimer's Journey'' *(2003) ''Gum-Dipped: A Daughter Remembers Rubber Town'' *(2010) ''Goosetown: Reconstructing an Akron Neighborhood''

Other nonfiction

*(1993) ''The Awakening: A Novel of Beginnings'' *(2022) ''Pursuing John Brown: On the Trail of a Radical Abolitionist'' (winning honorable mention in '' Civil War Monitor'''s yearly "Best Civil War Books")

Edited collections

*(1998) ''Bloodroot: Reflections on Place by Appalachian Women Writers'' (named Appalachian Book of the Year) *(2016) ''From Curlers to Chainsaws: Women and Their Machines''Reviews of ''From Curlers to Chainsaws'': * * * (winning the Independent Book Publisher Gold Medal Award for anthology)

Other Awards

* David B. Saunders Award in Creative Nonfiction (2009) * Individual Artist Grant from Ohio Arts Council (1997, 2013) * NEH-Reader's Digest Teacher-Scholar Award, full-year sabbatical (1990; one winner per state)