Scholar, teacher, Peace Corps Volunteer, and writer — a life shaped by language, literature, and the places books can take you.
Donna A. Gessell is Professor Emerita of English at the University of North Georgia, where she spent more than three decades teaching literature, linguistics, and the art of writing. She holds a doctorate in English Literature from Case Western Reserve University.
Before her academic career took shape, she served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Fiji from 1979 to 1982 — an experience that became the defining story of her life outside the classroom and the subject of her widely read essay, Living by the Book.