Norma C. Wilson’s writing has taken her full circle from poetry to literary analysis and back. Born in Clarksville, Tennessee, she began writing poetry as an English major at Austin Peay State University in the mid-1960s. She received a B.A. in English from Tennessee Technological University in 1968, a M.A. in English from A.P.S.U. in 1970 and taught high school English at Montgomery Central High School in Cunningham, Tennessee before entering the Ph.D. program at the University of Oklahoma. In 1978, after completing her degree, she moved to Vermillion, South Dakota, joined the University of South Dakota Department of English, and began a 27-year career there as Professor of English. Dr. Wilson received USD's Belbas-Larson Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2001 and presented the College of Arts and Science's Harrington Lecture in 2004. Upon retirement in 2005, she was named Professor Emerita. Her books include Wild Iris (poems, 1978), The Nature of Native American Poetry (2001), Under the Rainbow:  Poems from Mojácar (2012), Rivers, Wings & Sky  with visual artist Nancy Losacker, Frog Creek Road (2019) and Continuity (2020).  She and her husband, Jerry Wilson, co-wrote the film script for South Dakota: A Meeting of Cultures (1985).  She co-edited One-Room Country School:  South Dakota Stories (1999) with Charles Woodard, and edited Memory, Echo, Words, a poetry anthology (2014).  With Nancy Losacker, she received a 2013-14 grant from the South Dakota Arts Council for their collaborative exhibit, Rivers, Wings, and Sky.  Through the sponsorship of Yankton Area Arts, Wilson and Losacker were awarded a 2014 Media Grant from the South Dakota Humanities Council to develop presentations on their exhibit. Rivers, Wings & Sky  was featured in eight galleries in North and South Dakota, and Iowa. Publishers of Norma's poetry include South Dakota Magazine, Paddlefish, Prairie Fire, Caduceus, Gyroscope Review, South Dakota Review, Village Books Press, the South Dakota State Poetry Society, and Scurfpea Publishing. Norma is a member of the Women Poets Collective. She has served as Secretary on South Dakota State Poetry Society's board of directors. Norma Clark Wilson was the 2017 recipient of the Albert Nelson LIfetime Achievement Award from The Marquis Who's Who Publications Board.  Dr. Norma Wilson received The 2020-21 Dakota Conference Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Preservation of the Cultural Heritage of the Northern Plains from the Center for Western Studies, Augustana University, Sioux Falls, SD. She read from her new book Continuity on Thursday, October 22, from 3-4 p.m. on Zoom at the 2020 South Dakota Festival of Books which was virtual, due to COVID-19.  In 2021, she presented a reading and workshop for the WYO Poets in Gillette, Wyoming,  April 23-24. She participated with the Women Poets Collective in a virtual reading on May 1 and with Gyroscope Press Poets in a virtual reading on May 3.  She read and signed her book Continuity  at the Dakota Conference in Sioux Falls, SD on August 5th and at the 2021 South Dakota Book Festival in Deadwood, South Dakota. She participated in the gathering of artists and poets On Common Ground near Sioux City Iowa in September 2021, and her poetry is featured in a book On Common Ground edited by Ryan Allen and Brian T. Hazlett and published by Ice Cube Press in 2023.  She and other members of the Women Poets Collective will read at the 2024 South Dakota Book Festival in Brookings in September 2024.  Norma and her husband, Jerry Wilson, live in a geo-solar house they built on a prairie bluff above the Missouri River valley in rural Vermillion, South Dakota. There they work to conserve the nature that remains. They have two grown children, Walter Clark Wilson and Laura Grace Wilson, and four grandchildren.