Joyce Coyne was born in Akron, Ohio, during the summer of 1947. Her father, Thomas Coyne, was a supervisor for the Firestone Tires, 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, and her involvement in education has kept Dyer involved as well. Dyer graduated with a B.A. from Wittenberg University in 1969, and married her husband Daniel Dyer, a freelance writer, six months later. Between her marriage and 1979, Dyer gave birth to and raised her only child and earned a doctoral degree at Kent State University. She then taught high-school English for ten years at a private school in Hudson, Ohio, while beginning to publish magazine articles. She moved on to teach at Hiram College in 1990, where she currently is professor of English and director of writing. In 1998, Dyer returned to her alma mater Wittenberg to serve as visiting writer, and she has also been on staff at the Appalachian Writers Workshop (1999, 2002, 2003, 2005), the Radford University Highland Summer Festival (2000), and Antioch Writers’ Workshop (2005, 2009), and the Wright State Institute on Writing and Teaching (2002, 2003, 2004). She has published three books of her own, edited one collection, contributed chapters or essays to over a dozen more, and is in the process of writing three new books. She has also published over one hundred essays in magazines, newspapers, and journals.

Academic Publications

• (1993) The Awakening: A Novel of Beginnings

Personal Memoirs

• (1996) In a Tangled Wood: An Alzheimer's Journey
• (2003) Gum-Dipped: A Daughter Remembers Rubber Town

Edited Collections

• (1998) Bloodroot: Reflections on Place by Appalachian Women Writers