A transplanted Alabamian with a PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Associate Professor Amy Weldon has settled into Iowa life, getting her students pumped about local poetry slams and author readings at the Iowa Writers Workshop, teaching adult writing classes at a local arts center, and revising a second novel about a small town in nineteenth-century Iowa. 

A Southern story-teller in the grand tradition, Amy is a passionate teacher of Southern American literature, British Romanticism, and—primarily—creative writing:  fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry.  Amy’s personal essay “The Odd Girls:  Flannery O’Connor and Me,” was co-winner of Shenandoah’s Bevel Summers Award and the Carter Prize for the Essay in 2010.  An avid biker, seed-saver, and urban gardener, she blogs about sustainability, finance, and other nourishments of life and spirit.

"I describe my own goals with two interrelated Teaching Verbs: destabilize and rebuild. They aren’t what I do to students—they are what I help students do with their own assumptions, ideas, and skills." - Amy Weldon