Dana Wright Rushing

Dana Wright Rushing was born and raised in a small oil company town in the Texas Panhandle. She wrote poetry as a hobby in high school and served as the high school yearbook editor. Her columns on activities at the school were published in the local newspaper. She moved to Dallas as an adult and completed three degrees in rehabilitation science, psychology, and business. Dana spent most of her career in the healthcare industry. An unpublished book of poetry was written in 1989. She continued writing essays and short stories occasionally while raising her daughter and maintaining a busy career. When she retired in late 2015, she began writing essays more frequently. Her first book, A View from the Far Side, was published in 2017. The subjects of Dana's articles are politics, memoirs, adventures, and observations of life. Dana served on five nonprofit boards in the Texas Hill Country and was elected the Llano County Democratic Chair in 2018. She was elected to the State Democratic Executive Committee in 2020 and represented 17 Texas counties. While living in Llano County from 2017 to 2022, she worked diligently to elect progressive candidates by organizing town halls (including one featuring Beto), block walking events, fundraisers, etc. Dana's political activism was featured in a documentary produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Network in the summer of 2018. Dana wrote a weekly column in Horseshoe Bay for The Beacon for over a year until they refused to publish one of her columns regarding the asylum-seeking families living in tents on the Mexican side of the border. In 2022, she moved to Austin. Her favorite activity is spending time with her two grandchildren, who live nearby. Her children's book, Stinky Butts, was published in early 2022 as a response to Llano County Commissioners banning two children's books in the local public library because the titles contained the words "farting" and "butt." Another View from the Far Side was published in 2022. Her children's book, Heartbreak at Age Eight, was published in May 2023. Musings from the Far Side was published in 2023. Her latest children's/young adult book, Cinder and Ash, is about the recovery of two animals in the Texas Panhandle wildfires in February 2024.