Diane Kendig

Interview with Diane Kendig.

Diane Kendig is a writer and teacher born and raised in Canton, Ohio, where she currently resides again after decades living and working elsewhere. Kendig’s four poetry chapbooks include the most recent Prison Terms (Main Street Rag, 2018), as well as The Places We Find Ourselves (Finishing Line 2009), Diane Kendig’s Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 2001), and A Tunnel of Flute Song (Cleveland State University 1980). She also co-edited the tribute anthology In the Company of Russell Atkins (Red Giant 2016) and published with photographer Steve Cagan a collection of her translations from Nicaraguan poets, And a Pencil to Write Your Name (Bottom Dog 1986). Her poems and essays have appeared in many anthologies, such as Letters to the World (Red Hen), Colors of a Different Horse (NCTE), Ariadne’s Thread: Contemporary Women’s Journals (Harper and Row), and in over 100 journals, including J Journal, The Minnesota Review, Under the Sun, Ekphrasis, and English Journal. The recipient of two Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards in Poetry, Kendig has also received awards from the Fulbright Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and she has held artist residencies at Yaddo and at the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Her book Prison Terms was a finalist for the Cathy Smith Bowers Contest. She won a Sears Foundation Award for teaching and the Outstanding Educator award at The University of Findlay, where she was a professor for two decades. In addition to her writing and literature classes on campus, she regularly taught in the university’s prison program in medium security. She also has taught at Cleveland State University, Kent State Stark, Cuyahoga Community College (all in Ohio), and Bentley University (in MA), and in the Ohio Arts Council “Artist in Residency” program, in addition to teaching high school Spanish and English in her first years as an educator. Currently Kendig is working on two poetry collections: a bilingual collection of poems, Woman with a Fan, about the Spanish artist Maria Blanchard, and a book of poems, Stays. She curates creative writing sites for libraries, including Read + Write: 30 Days of Poetry for National Poetry Month, and she continues to give readings and to lead creative writing workshops. Diane's info: https://dianekendig.com/