Louise McNeill

Louise McNeill (January 9, 1911 – June 18, 1993) was an American poet, essayist, and historian of Appalachia.

McNeill was born January 9, 1911 in Buckeye, West Virginia, USA on a farm that her family had owned since 1769. She wrote her first poem at 16, pecking it out on a friend's typewriter. The experience caused her to vow "to be a poet and write poems forever."

She graduated from Concord College and then got her master's from Miami University in Ohio. She earned her doctorate from West Virginia University. She also studied at Middlebury College with the poet Robert Frost, and at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

In 1939 she married Roger Pease. She taught English and history for over 30 years, including positions in rural one-room schools in West Virginia, at Potomac State College, Fairmont State College, and West Virginia University.

Louis McNeill begin her publishing career selling short poems to the Saturday Evening Post. In 1931 her first collection, "Mountain White", was published. She went on to publish six other collections. In the 1980s McNeill's literary reputation was re-established by the poet Maggie Anderson, who edited McNeill's memoir for the University of Pittsburgh Press, as well as a new and selected poems in 1991.

In 1979 then-governor Jay Rockefeller named her West Virginia's poet laureate.

McNeill died on June 18, 1993.

Works

* "Mountain White" (1931)
* "Gauley Mountain" (1939)
* "Time Is Our House" (1942)
* "Paradox Hill" (1972)
* "Elderberry Flood" (1979)
* "The Milkweed Ladies" (1988)
* "Hill Daughter: New and Selected Poems" (1991)
* "Fermi Buffalo" (1994)