Born in Macon, Georgia, to Mac Hyman and Gwendolyn Holt Hyman, Gwyn grew up
in south Georgia in the small town of Cordele, not far from Plains. Her father
was a writer himself and published the bestseller No Time for Sergeants
in 1954 when he was only 31 years old. It was turned into a popular play and
film, starring Andy Griffith.
Upon graduating from Florida State University with a B.A. in English, Gwyn
joined the Peace Corps serving in Costa Rica and working as a preschool program
coordinator and teacher in a village, without running water or electricity, near
the Panamanian border. She married her husband, Angel, also a volunteer, six
months after her arrival.
Gwyn’s youth was spent frantically running from her father’s vocation--seeking
any other occupation--because she felt the stress of writing had precipitated
his early death of a heart attack at the age of 39. Throughout the 1970s, one
job followed another until the couple wound up in 1980 in Berea, Kentucky.
In 1983 Gwyn could not longer run away from writing, from the realization that
this was what she was meant to do. Therefore, she applied and was accepted into
the MFA Program for Creative Writing at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina.
Not until her graduation in 1986 did she dedicate herself completely to writing.
Gwyn’s collection of short stories, Sharing Power, was nominated for a
Pushcart Press Editors’ Book Award. Her short fiction has been published and
anthologized around the country. Her short story “Little Saint” received the
Cecil Hackney Literary Award for first prize in the National Short Story
Competition and later appeared in Prairie Schooner. She has received grants from
the Kentucky Arts Council and from the Kentucky Foundation for Women. In July,
1998, her first novel was published by Viking/Penguin. Highlighted in Time
Magazine by Barnes & Noble, Icy Sparks was one of several novels chosen
to represent “The Next Wave of Great Literary Voices” in the Discover Great New
Writers program.
Gwyn and her husband have lived in Kentucky for over 20 years. Most of the time,
they have lived in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in the small town
of Berea. In 2001 they moved to Versailles, Kentucky. In 2005, Gwyn's second novel, The Woodsman's Daughter, was published.
This biography was last updated on 07/23/2011.
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