Photo by Susan Gentry
Merle D. Hinchee (born Merle Joy Davidson, June 24, 1928, Berwick, Louisiana, U.S.A.), retired after a long career as a high school English teacher, reading specialist, and principal of elementary, middle, and high schools. She and her late husband, Ray, were the first teachers in southern Louisiana to teach the writing and appreciation of haiku. Her work, which often reflects life in the Louisiana bayou and marsh country, has been published since 1999 in print journals including Haiku Headlines and Frogpond and online in The Heron’s Nest, the Electronic Poetry Network of Shreve Memorial Library (Shreveport, La.), and The Haiku Foundation’s Per Diem Archive. She was featured as a Haiku Headlines Poet of the Month in issue 188 (November 2003). Hinchee is a member of the Haiku Society of America, and her haiku have been included in several of the HSA members’ anthologies. She now resides in Cary, North Carolina.
Note: This is an abstract of a longer biographical article to come.