Dana Wildsmith grew up in south Georgia, the daughter of a Methodist minister who was active in working for social justice. She attended college wherever her Navy husband’s career took them, finally obtaining a B.A. in Sociology from Virginia Wesleyan College. In 1999, she returned to her family’s land in north Georgia , where she and her extended family work to preserve a 125-year-old family farm in the midst of encroaching development. She teaches English to adults of many nationalities in the English Literacy Program of the Adult Literacy Program of Lanier Technical College.

In 1992, Wildsmith was named a Poetry Fellow in the South Carolina Academy of Authors, and her second chapbook, Annie, won the Palanquin Press competition of the University Of South Carolina, Aiken. She has worked as a Writer-in-residence for the Devil’s Tower National Monument and the Island Institute in Sitka, Alaska. She worked as an Artist In the Schools for the South Carolina Humanities Department. She teaches poetry workshops throughout the United States. Her poems and essays have been widely published in both literary and commercial journals, including Yankee, The Kentucky Poetry Review, and The Chattahoochee Review. She is among the writers featured in the University Press of Kentucky’s Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia. Her other published works are: Alchemy, Our Bodies Remember, Choices (an audio collection), and One Good Hand.