about the author

At age fifteen, Ann Goette won second prize in the Louisiana State Poetry Contest with a cowardly poem about racism. She kept writing. Her first published poem, as an adult, appeared in the SOUTHERN REVIEW.

From age twenty to about forty Goette was Distler. Early works and two plays, Coming of Age and Something in the Air Feels Like Tomorrow were published under Distler.

In 1990, Goette's wonderful, brilliant (former) agent, Sandra Dykstra arbitrarily changed Goette to Goethe during the whirlwind bidding auction for her first novel Midnight Lemonade. Among the five or six serious bidders were Little Brown and Company, Delacorte, and Hyperion (a brand new publishing house). The latter two offered an almost unheard of amount of money for a first novel by a forty-five year-old female nobody. Goethe went with Delacorte and, to this day, suffers seller’s regret.

Goette to Distler then back to Goette and now Goette and Goethe. Notice, all this name changing doesn’t much come up for male writers; no whining intended.

Ann Goethe/Goette/Distler's poetry has been published in such journals, anthologies, and magazines as: THE LOWDOWN, OUTERBRIDGE, INKWELL, CLARE, THIRD WEDNESDAY, NO BUSINESS POEMS, REFLECTIONS ON THE NEW RIVER, ARTS ALIVE!, and BARK MAGAZINE. Finishing Line Press published her collection of Poetry, River Bow, in 2015.

Her stories and essays have appeared in THE CRESCENT REVIEW, THE BROKEN PLATE, LOVE AFTER 70, SOUTHERN DISTINCTION MAGAZINE, HALF TONES TO JUBILEE, SLIPSTREAM, ROCKHURST REVIEW, THE NEW ORLEANS REVIEW, EARTH'S DAUGHTERS and ISBN. Her novel, Midnight Lemonade, was a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discovery Prize.

She wrote the libretto for Travels, an opera performed by Opera Roanoke.  She has also written more than twenty plays for young people. The National Association of Secondary School Principals made Coming of Age, Goethe’s musical about middle school children, into a film.

Goette is the founder of the Blacksburg New School which celebrates it’s 50th anniversary in 2021. (Visit blacksburgnewschool.org to see her in “A Video Tribute”.) She is active with the ReNew The New River Committee and the Giles Early Education Project. She was recently named “Outstanding Volunteer” for her region. She is a member of the performance group Web Six. She resides in Virginia on a peninsula encircled by the ancient New River.