Dianne Elizabeth Timblin (1966-2025)

---

Celebration of Life Information

On Saturday, November 15, 2025, at Duke Memorial United Methodist Church in Durham, NC, friends and family gathered to celebrate Dianne’s life and legacy. You can watch the announcement of Dianne’s passing at the Sept. 14 service by Pastor Heather Rodrigues HERE.

In lieu of flowers…

Dianne was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in October 2018 and fought it with everything she had for nearly seven full years. She received outstanding treatment at the Duke Cancer Clinic. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you consider making a donation to either the DCI Breast Cancers Fund, Palliative Care Fund (which managed her cancer-related symptoms), or the Cancer Patient Support Program (which provides counseling for patients, loved ones, and caregivers). Click this link to go to their main donation page, then enter the area you wish to give to by entering the name in the “choose an area”. As you click through, you’ll have the opportunity to give in Dianne’s memory, and also to make gifts to more than one area if you wish.

---

About Dianne

DIANNE TIMBLIN (1966–2025) lived, wrote, and edited in Durham, North Carolina. She was a story teller and a gifted poet. Her poetry appeared in Talisman, Phoebe, So and So, Fringe, Rivendell, Fanzine, and Foursquare, among others, and has been translated into Spanish for the Venezuelan literary blog Eternal Typewriter. Her published collection of poems, A History of Fire, was one of five selected by National Book Award nominee Fred Moten to be published by Three Count Pour in 2013. 

Here’s her story: Born in Maryland under the sign of Taurus, Dianne and family moved when she was a few years old to Pittsburgh. She was lucky enough to see the Great One play right field and was there when the Pirates won the 1971 World Series. Soon after, the family relocated to Greensboro, NC, where she met her best friend Martha when they were in the sixth grade. She went to Grimsley High, and then on to Wake Forest University, where she majored in English. From there, she went to NC State, where she earned her first graduate degree (Master of Arts in Literature, with specialization in fiction writing). She won the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award in 1991. From 1992 to 1996, she taught at Caldwell Community College, a time she enjoyed but later characterized as doing “missionary work” because of the low pay and long hours.

From there, she matriculated to George Mason University, where she continued teaching. In August 1998, she was introduced by Marla, a GMU classmate she sometimes sang with at local coffee shops, to Jamie Lewis, a fellow starving grad student who was working on his PhD in History at Florida State. She graduated in May 1999 with a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, with specialization in poetry, and they married on August 22, 1999, two years and one day after they remembered meeting (ask Jamie about that sometime). She worked as a marketing writer in the DC area, supporting Jamie while he finished his degree. After living through the attack on the Pentagon on 9/11, the anthrax scare, the Starbucks murders, and the DC sniper shootings, they escaped the Washington area in 2003 when he landed a job at the Forest History Society in Durham.

Dianne spent a total of ten years of teaching English at the college level before working for several companies as a writer and editor. In her last position (November 2014–October 2018), she served as books and culture editor for the magazine American Scientist, a job she said she enjoyed the most and felt like she had been working towards her entire life. You can find her reviews and columns by searching on her name and that of the magazine. She stopped working after being diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer at age 52.

In addition to her day job, she served as an editorial consultant for the Forest History Society’s annual magazine Forest History Today, edited by Jamie, beginning with the 2006 issue. After they visited Cleveland, Ohio, in 2008, she contributed an article to the Spring 2008 issue about Hessler Court, a wood-paved road. They consulted on and were interviewed for a documentary film about the 1949 wildfire that killed 14 smokejumpers at Mann Gulch, Montana (she first appears at the 8:59 mark), and even shot footage there for the filmmakers in 2010. She continued consulting on the magazine even after diagnosis. She also consulted with Jamie on all five of his books. Sadly, she did not live to see completion of the last one, which has been dedicated to her.

Here are some selected honors, awards, and accomplishments of Dianne’s:

• Nâzım Hikmet Poetry Competition, honorable mention (2011); Brenda L. Smart Poetry Prize (2006) and Virginia Downs Poetry Award (1998), finalist.
• Served as preliminary judge for the Nâzım Hikmet Poetry Competition (2012), the Indy Poetry Contest (2010), and the Mary Roberts Rinehart Award (1998).
• Society for Technical Communication, Washington, DC, Award of Excellence, 2000.
• Work selected for inclusion in bimonthly Library of Congress “Poetry at Noon” reading series, 1998.
• Awarded graduate fellowship (1996) and teaching assistantship (1996–1999), George Mason University.
• Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award, North Carolina State University, 1991.

Share a memory below in the Comment box. Thanks!