Born in New Jersey and raised in rural New York, Barbara Wiedemann received her B.A. from the State University of New York at Buffalo, her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of South Florida. She resides in Montgomery, Alabama, where she is professor emerita of English at Auburn University Montgomery. She taught American literature (including a course on Southern women writers) and creative writing (poetry). Her scholarly work has generally focused on modern and contemporary American writers resulting in Josephine Herbst’s Short Fiction: A Window to her Life and Times, journal articles, and numerous reference book entries.

In the past few years, Wiedemann has turned her attention to writing poetry. Her inspiration often comes from her travels. Escaping the heat and humidity of summer in Montgomery, she heads west, and for a few months, she lives in her van, camping in remote areas in the national forests and on BLM lands. Often her only companion is her dog. These experiences form the basis of her first chapbook Half-Life of Love (Finishing Line Press, 2008).

Her next chapbook Sometime in October (Finishing Line Press, 2010) developed out of a realization that if family stories are not told, they will soon be forgotten and irretrievable. Her third chapbook The Death of a Pope and Other Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2013) resulted from her connection to Rome that has stretched over twenty-five years. The title poem grew out of her six-week stay at the American Academy in Rome as a Visiting Artist during the final illness and death of Pope John Paul II.

The catalyst for her fourth chapbook Desert Meditation (Finishing Line Press, 2018) came from hiking the Pacific Crest Trail for five months with her dog Angel in 2015. In these poems Wiedemann suggests that the stillness and solitude found in the natural world are necessary antidotes to the hectic pace of today’s technology driven environment.

Her first full-length poetry book Following the Snow Leopard (Kelsay Books, 2025) continues the emphasis on the natural world but also included are warnings about climate change and about human-caused destruction and devastation of the natural world. As Wiedemann writes in a poems, “We will join the dinosaurs.”

Wiedemann does several reading during the year, and her poems have been published in a wide range of journals and magazines including American Whitewater, South American Explorer, Lalitamba, and Feminist Studies.

Father, Anita, and Zonia