Born and raised in Caldwell County, North Carolina, Daun Daemon is the youngest of three sisters who came of age in their Mama’s beauty shop, a one-chair operation attached to their house by a breezeway. When her Mama wasn’t looking, she would eavesdrop on the women and sneak a pack of nabs from the shop’s snack jar and a bottle of Sun Drop from the drink box. Those days in the beauty shop stayed with her for decades, inspiring much of her poetry and fiction.
Daemon has published short stories in Flock, Dead Mule School, Literally Stories, and Delmarva Review, among others. Her poems have appeared in Third Wednesday, Typehouse Literary Review, Remington Review, Deep South Magazine, Into the Void, Peeking Cat Literary, Amsterdam Quarterly, Adanna, and numerous other journals and anthologies. She teaches scientific communication at North Carolina State University, where she was a past director of the Young Writers Workshop and founder of the Teen Writers Workshop. Daemon lives in Raleigh with her husband and, at the time of this writing, three cats.
Her poem “My Daddy Taught Me to Pack” received a Pushcart Prize nomination in 2018.
Paperback: 90 pages
Publisher: Kelsay Books (July 10, 2023)
Awards:
Origami Poems Project: Kindness Poem 2017 (1st Place)