Toni Atchison Biography

I was born in Lincoln, IL. in 1961. My parents divorced when I was quite young, and my mother remarried, to a man she'd been crazy about for years. My step-dad has been my dad since I was 3. My extensive family is still around this area.
When I was about 7, we moved to Taylorville, and I spent most of my youth and young adult life around that area, until around 1991, when I moved to Bloomington. There, I lived and worked until I met my husband, Dennis. We lived in Atlanta until we seperated and eventually divorced in 1998. In '98, my daughter, April, and I moved to Indiana, where we worked in a factory. I met the woman who inspired the poem 'Apologies to Nosa' at that factory. When the plant shut down, we remained friends, and to this day continue to write, email and text back and forth.
My daughter and I moved back here, to be near family, mostly because my dad's health isn't the best anymore. She just bought her very first house, at the age of 28, and this is where we live now.