After Helene

by Nancy Dillingham

Nancy Dillingham

Nancy Dillingham is a sixth-generation Dillingham from the small community of Dillingham in the Big Ivy section of western North Carolina. Her poetry collection Home was nominated for a SIBA. Her poetry, short fiction, essays, and letters have appeared in various journals and newspapers, including  Asheville Poetry Review, Great Smokies Review (online), Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, Poetry in Plain Sight Project, Mountain Xpress,  News & Observer, and Asheville Citizen-Times. Her latest publications include No Time Like the Present: A Memoir in Essays and Curves: Collected Stories from Redhawk Publications and the chapbooks Promise and Longing from Kelsay Books. She lives in Asheville, NC.

praise for After Helene

[Nancy Dillingham] brings imagination to memory to make every reader participate. The syllables vibrate with love for family and longing harmony for humanity.

- Shelby Stephenson, author of Cow Mire Songs and Poet Laureate of North Carolina, 2015-18

Nancy Dillingham’s poems counterbalance beautifully the facts of Helene’s havoc with the recognition that “after the pall of Helene’s call,” humanity can/will find “a garden of repose,” a “spot of sun upon a rock wall.”

-Celia Miles, Appalachian author of Eight Nights at the Harris Hotel 

Nancy Dillingham’s poems tell of destruction while searching for rays of hope. With her storyteller’s approach, she describes the darkness of Hurricane Helene–trees downed, days never ending, loss unimaginable, fears unshakable–to a brighter dawn where squirrels scamper, birds sing, the sun shines, and the goodness of strangers emerge. Dillingham’s poems will remind all who read them that our dark days can find light again.

-Kelly S. Hamlin, author of Sparkles of Joy: Shining God's Grace Through Scripture-Based Poems