Diane Hammond

A native New Yorker, Diane Hammond spent the majority of her school years in Upper Nyack, NY. After graduating from Nyack High School, she attended and earned a BA from Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont.

Hammond first began writing in Washington, DC, cutting her teeth on short stories and attending classes at the Glen Echo Writers Center in Glen Echo, Maryland, and joining a number of ad hoc writing groups. Her first short story was published in Woman's World, followed by others in Mademoiselle, Yankee Magazine, the Washington Review, and other periodicals.

In 1984, she moved to tiny Newport, Oregon (pop. 9,000), on the central Oregon coast, a writer's paradise with its relative isolation, constant winter storms and harsh beauty. She began maturing artistically there, discovering themes and settings that have resonated in her writing ever since.