UNC Asheville Announces Bestselling Author Jami Attenberg As The Spring 2026 Wilma Dykeman Writer-in-Residence

This week, the University of North Carolina Asheville and the Wilma Dykeman Legacy announced that Jami Attenberg will serve as the Spring 2026 Wilma Dykeman Write-in-Residence. The residency honors Wilma Dykeman, who was born near Asheville, became a best selling author, and help found Appalachian Studies.   

“I’m thrilled to be the recipient of this fellowship in honor of this pioneering writer,” said Attenberg. “And I’m excited to connect with the writing community in Asheville.” 

Attenberg is a New York Times bestselling author of ten books, including The Middlesteins, All Grown Up, the recently published A Reason to See You Again, and a memoir, I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home. She has been a finalist for The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction and the St. Francis College Literary Prize, and she was longlisted twice for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. Kirkus has dubbed her, “the poet laureate of difficult families.” 

During her May and June residency, Attenberg will launch the ninth year of her annual online group writing accountability project #1000wordsofsummer, which inspired the USA Today bestseller 1000 Words: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round.  

With her 1000 Words project, Attenberg hosts a community of 52,000 writers of all levels who support each other to write 1000 words a day for two weeks. This year, the program will run May 30 through June 12. 1000 Words is consistently cited in interviews and acknowledgments as a treasured resource for writers at all stages of their career—perhaps the greatest praise of all. 

To promote 1000 Words, Attenberg will participate in a conversation with author Niina Polari at Malaprops Book Store on May 19, as well as events at Hub City in Spartanburg on May 30 and a conversation with author Tessa Fontaine at the Flatiron Writers Room on June 6. More information on these events can be found at 1000wordsofsummer.substack.com.