Maria Edna Campos Wins 2025 Wilma Dykeman Award
“Together We Are Asheville” is a reflection on the resiliency of our communities.
Her poem, “Juntos Somos Asheville” (“Together We Are Asheville”), captures the post-Hurricane Helene pain and resiliency of folks living in western North Carolina.
On September 27, 2024, Hurricane Helene hit WNC hard. Torrential rains flooded rivers and streams as never before—including the famed Great Flood of 1916—and devastated forests throughout the region. The hurricane laid waste to all living things, including human beings. Almost fifty people died in Buncombe County alone. In Asheville, Helene destroyed Biltmore Village and the River Arts District, cut power and cell phone service, closed off interstate access, and even shut down the National Climatic Data Center.
Although the people of the area were hurting, the region was also in the thoughts and prayers of many people across the country. Long-time community leader Maria Campos was one of the empathetic. She and her husband had left Asheville on a trip to Texas just ten days before Helene hit the Carolina coast.
As Maria and her husband monitored the hurricane’s movement northwestward, they frantically tried to contact friends and neighbors. Weeks afterward, reflecting on the tragedy, Maria couldn’t get to sleep. “That poem gushed out of me,” she recalled, “about 10:30 that night.”
“Together We Are Asheville” will be published soon in these pages.
