Wilma Dykeman Stokely, known as the First Lady of Appalachian Literature, played a key role in raising awareness about pollution in the French Broad River. Her 1955 book The French Broad highlighted environmental concerns and influenced later civic projects in Asheville. She passed away in 2006 and is buried in a North Asheville cemetery.
Wilma Dykeman Stokely was born on May 20, 1920, in the Beaverdam Creek area of North Carolina as an only child. She attended Grace Elementary and Grace High School before studying at Biltmore Junior College, which later became UNC Asheville. After two years there, she transferred to Northwestern University in Illinois, earning a bachelor's degree in speech in 1940.
At Northwestern, she met James R. Stokely Jr., a poet from Newport, Tennessee. The couple married that same year in the front yard of Dykeman's family home and raised two sons while dividing their time between Asheville and Newport. When Stokely faced a contentious buyout from his family's business, they turned to apple farming, managing orchards across the North Carolina-Tennessee border to support their writing income.
Dykeman's career included radio scripts, newspaper contributions, and features in publications such as the New York Times Magazine and Reader’s Digest. She wrote the column The Simple Life for the Knoxville News Sentinel from 1962 to 2000. Her debut book, The French Broad, published in 1955 as the 49th volume in the Rivers of America series, addressed the river's history and culture. It featured a chapter titled Who killed the French Broad?, which critiqued pollution as a community issue.
For this work, she received the first Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award from the Western North Carolina Historical Association. Dykeman authored 17 additional books on Appalachian themes, including The Far Family, Return the Innocent Earth, and Neither Black nor White, co-written with her husband and awarded the Sidney Hillman Book of the Year.
In 2021, Asheville City Council honored her by naming a greenway in the River Arts District after her. The Wilma Dykeman Greenway runs along the Swannanoa and French Broad rivers. She died on December 22, 2006, at age 86 from complications after hip surgery and is buried in Beaverdam Baptist Church Cemetery near her childhood home.
