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18 GU I D E to Y E L L OW S P R I NG S | 2O22 – 2O23 were encouraged to settle here by the famous educa- tor and abolitionist Horace Mann, president of Antioch College during the days of the national struggle over slavery. At home, her parents spoke of Black heroes such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson, and their reading encompassed a curiously broad range. “Every week the mail would bring us The Crisis — the magazine of the NAACP — and The New Yorker. For a poor rural family in Ohio, that’s a strange combination,” she said. But it didn’t seem strange to Hamilton until she was a student at Antioch — she won a scholarship there — and her college friends, visiting in her home, would show their surprise at the magazines and books they found lying around the Hamilton house- hold. By then, she was already a writer. “I think I was always a writer. I was a singer, too, and I liked sports, but writing was the consistent thing,” she said. It was as a writer — “that was the pose I affected,” she explained — that she ventured away from home at the age of 19, dropping out of Antioch after three years there. “I had picked it up that, if you were going to be a writer, you had to go to New York, so I went to New York,” she said. At Antioch, she and other writers-to-be studied under Nolan Miller, whose creative writing classes were legend - ary. In New York, she found another “marvelous” teacher, Hiram Haydn, at The New School. She wrote and wrote — but initially, she found no success. “I couldn’t get an agent,” she said. “It was the old story. You can’t get published with - out an agent, and you can’t get an agent unless you’ve ▲ In 1984, Hamilton gave young writers an account of her life’s work during a mentor education class in creative writing. Sitting at the desk in back, from left: Zoey McCarty, Felicia Chappelle, Jessie Dotson, Ivy Alexander and Kim Anthony. P H O T O : Y S N E W S A R C H I V E S B ONADIE S G LASSTUDI O  Custom stained and beveled glass  Windows, lamps and mirrors  Blown glass from artisans around the U.S.  On-site work and repair services 937-767-7021 • 220 Xenia Ave., Yellow Springs Open Monday–Sunday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m. Located on W. north coL Lege & W. center coL Lege StreetS One-, two-, or three-bedrooms with 1½ baths and laundry on-site. 937 • 324 • 3606 HawtHorne Place • • Townhouse aparTmenTs •