Nancy D. Taylor

Nancy Dew Taylor, of Greenville, SC, died August 17, 2025, after a fierce battle with cancer. She was 86. She was born April 20, 1939, the daughter of Marian and Joe Dew of Lake City, SC, and was predeceased by her parents and a sister, Betsy Dew Ashley.

She is survived by her daughter Marian Taylor and son-in-law Anthony Rahaim of Flat Rock, NC; her son James (Jay) Taylor and daughter-in-law Hala Taylor and grandsons Jason and Simon Taylor of Asheville; sister Joan Dew Kellett and brother-in-law Mike Kellett of Greenville, SC; brother-in-law Charles Taylor of Kinston, NC; nephew Michael Kellett and wife Christine and their children; nephew Josh Kellett and wife Brandi and their children; niece Eden Martin and husband Steve and their children; Hart Ashley of Greenville, SC; Margaret (Maggie) Marks of Greenville, SC; and Maaike Schavemaker of Orlando, FL, and her children with Hart Ashley.

Nancy was a beloved family member and was also loved and respected as a professor, poet, medical editor, and community leader. She grew up in Lake City, SC, a town that remained close to her heart. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Furman University in 1961 with a degree in English. She was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship for graduate school and earned a master's degree in English at UNC Chapel Hill.

After a year of teaching at Randolph-Macon College, she married and raised a family, first in Lake City, where she taught in public schools, before moving to San Juan, Puerto Rico, where her family lived for 17 years and where she made lifelong friends while delighting in the fact that her children became bilingual.

With her children in college, Nancy returned to SC and to school to earn a PhD in American Literature at the University of SC. She taught at Lander University in Greenwood, SC, where she inspired students with her love of literature (especially Faulkner) and writing.

In 1991, she began a new career in medical editing and medical humanities at the Greenville (SC) Hospital System. She loved helping medical personnel with their publications, introducing surgeons to the likes of Sylvia Plath, and bringing poets and novelists to Greenville for lectures on the crucial roles of humanities and the arts in medical training. Through the American Medical Writers Association, she taught workshops from coast to coast in writing and editing.

Nancy had grown up not only in the low country of SC but also in the mountains of NC, where her parents had a summer home. After her retirement, she turned her passion for literature to the writing of poetry. She was the author of two published collections and one chapbook. One of her greatest loves was the Wildacres Retreat in those mountains, where so much of her heart always lived, where much of her writing was done, and where she forged lasting friendships. It must be said that she took special delight in playing the role of "The Church Lady" every year at the close of the Wildacres Writers Workshop. "Isn't that special?" Nancy was special–always encouraging others, serious (but never too serious) about her craft, and a most generous friend to so many.

Nancy Taylor was an adventurous woman who loved travel. Other mountains that found a place in her heart were those of Acadia National Park on Mt. Desert Island in Maine, where she hiked and climbed and ate lobster each fall. Most years saw her either traveling to Europe or actively planning the next trip. Her love for music took her to Charleston every year for the Spoleto Festival.

She was also a community-minded person, and her love of the arts drew her to the Emrys Foundation, which she served as a board member and president, and through which she continued to help and inspire other writers and artists.

A Celebration of Life will be held at a later date. Memorials may be made to the poetry scholarship being established in her name at the Wildacres Writers Workshop.