Louise McNeill was born in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, on the farm where her family had lived since 1769. After studying at Middlebury College with Robert Frost and attending the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, McNeill received her doctorate from West Virginia University. During her thirty-year tenure as a professor of English and history, she also became an active opponent of strip mining and participated in the first Earth Day in 1970. Governor Jay Rockefeller appointed McNeill West Virginia’s poet laureate in 1979, a position that she held until her death in 1993....
