Writer. Teacher. Environmentalist. Seeker.
Amy Weldon, an Alabama native, is professor of English at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa and codirector of its biennial Luther College Writers Festival. She holds a B.A. in English and journalism (University Honors Scholar designation) from Auburn University (1996) and a Ph.D in nineteenth-century British literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2005).
“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.” – Frederick Buechner
Amy is the author of The Hands-On Life: How to Wake Yourself Up and Save The World (Cascade Books, 2018), The Writer’s Eye: Observation and Inspiration for Creative Writers (Bloomsbury, 2018), and Eldorado, Iowa: A Novel (Bowen Press Books, 2019).
Her novel-in-progress, Creature, is based on the life of Mary Shelley. Featuring chapters on Byron, the Shelleys, William Blake, Anna Barbauld, Mary Wollstonecraft, and her beloved John Keats, her nonfiction book in progress, An Awful Rainbow: Reading the Romantics in a World on Fire, blends memoir and scholarship to argue that these writers can teach us how to live richly and responsibly in uncertain times. Featuring craft and career advice, a wide range of featured authors, and samples of work from her own students (with their thoughts on their process), her textbook Advanced Fiction Writing: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology is under contract to Bloomsbury Academic for delivery in December 2021.
At Luther College, Amy teaches creative writing (fiction, nonfiction, and poetry), Paideia (Luther’s first-year common course), Romanticism, Medicine in Literature, and a self-designed biennial study-abroad course called “In Frankenstein’s Footsteps: The Keats-Shelley Circle in London, Geneva, and Italy.” In the spring of 2019, she directed the London portion of the “London and Florence: Arts in Context” program for the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM), spending five months in the city that – next to Oak Bowery, Alabama – is her favorite place in the world.
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Relatively Recent Recommended Reading
- The Old Enemy and anything else by Henry Porter
- Intensive Care by Gavin Francis
- The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell
- Leading Men by Christopher Castellani
- The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
- Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty from a Hospital Diary, Timothy Snyder
- Restoration, Rose Tremain
- The Vampire: A New History, Nick Groom
- An Elephant in Rome, Loyd Grossman
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What I'm Writing
- Creature: A Novel of Mary Shelley
- Advanced Fiction Writing: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (for Bloomsbury Academic)
- An Awful Rainbow: Reading the Romantics in a World on Fire
… and more.
