Darnell Arnoult is the prize-winning author of Galaxie Wagon: Poems and What Travels With Us: Poems(LSU Press) and the novel Sufficient Grace (Simon & Schuster, Inc.), which received a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly. Her recent poetry collection, Incantations is forthcoming from Madville Publishing. Her shorter works have appeared in a variety of journals, including Cutleaf, Appalachian Places, Appalachian Heritage, Asheville Poetry Review, Nantahala Review, Now and Then, Sandhills Review, Southern Cultures, Southern Exposure, Southwest Review, and various anthologies.
Arnoult holds an MFA from The University of Memphis, an MA in English and Creative Writing from North Carolina State University, and a BA in American Studies with a concentration in Southern Folklore from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Go Heels!
She is the recipient of the SIBA Poetry Book of the Year Award, the Weatherford Award for Appalachian Literature, the Thomas and Lillie D. Chaffin Award, and the Mary Frances Hobson Medal for Arts and Letters. In 2007 she was named Tennessee Writer of the Year by the Tennessee Writers Alliance. During her tenure as Writer-in- Residence at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tennessee, 2010-2020, Arnoult directed the Mountain Heritage Literary Festival, in collaboration with Humanities Tennessee founded and co-directed the Appalachian Young Writers Workshop (now The Tennessee Young Writers Workshop hosted by East Tennessee State University), and, along with writer and editor Denton Loving, was co-founder and co-executive editor of the national online publication drafthorse: a literary journal of work and no work.
Arnoult is a long-time faculty member of Table Rock Writers Workshop (formerly Duke Writers Workshop), John C. Campbell Folk School, and for 8 years taught extended novel and memoir workshops at Learning Events.
Born and raised in Henry County, VA, she left there at 19 and has lived over 20 years North Carolina, 20 years in middle and east TN, and is now back in the NC Piedmont.
After retiring from university teaching and returning to North Carolina, Darnell offers a constellation of services for writers of all levels including workshops, coaching, and developmental editing. See her blog, Wrestling the Gorilla.
