Stories on the Front Porch: The World of Donna Campbell Smith
Campbell Smith signing her books for the Corolla Wild Horse Fund.
A dirt road outside of Franklinton winds long and narrow, hemmed by oaks, pines, and pasture. Dust swirls up behind the tires as you ease toward a blue farmhouse settled against the woods that seems as if it’s grown right out of the land. A rocking chair sways back and forth on a wide front porch. Donna Campbell Smith is settled into a chair like she’s always belonged to it, soft smile on her face as she waves hello. Her porch becomes the perfect stage for stories on a still afternoon—some pulled from history, others conjured by imagination, all of them carried forward by a woman who has spent the last 25 years writing them down.
“I liked writing stories as a kid,” she begins, sitting at the kitchen table as she passes out tea and refreshments. “I liked research papers, all that stuff most people didn’t like. I always had that in me.”
Donna grew up in Plymouth, North Carolina and later moved closer to her daughter. The two put together a small community magazine. “That’s when I came across an article in the News & Observer about a wild horse that had been hit on the new highway through Corolla. I didn’t even know about the wild horses when I lived right down there.”
The news sparked something. Donna began sketching the outline of a children’s book about a foal separated during a hurricane. “And then,” she says, “this little Native American girl just appeared in the story. I’d heard people talk about characters taking on a life of their own. That’s what happened—I just kept writing and didn’t really know where I was going.”
The book became Pale as the Moon, published in 1999, weaving together history, imagination, and her own fascination with the fate of the Lost Colony. “Sometimes you just stumble across the right detail, and it keeps growing,” she says.
One such detail led her to a little-known Revolutionary War heroine: Betsy Dowdy. Donna discovered Dowdy’s story in the same Daniel Barefoot book that had inspired her earlier novel.
“Paul Revere rode thirteen miles. Betsy Dowdy did fifty-one—and she swam her pony across Currituck Sound,” she says, her tone part disbelief, part admiration. Donna shakes her head at the thought. “She rode all the way down into Hertford to warn that Lord Dunmore, who had already devastated Virginia, was coming into North Carolina. Because of her, they were able to stop him. But she’s not in the history books. All we ever hear about is Paul Revere.”
The injustice lit a fire. Donna began researching Betsy’s life and eventually published An Independent Spirit, her second novel. “I love telling kids about Betsy,” she says. “When I did school visits, their jaws would drop. A teenage girl did that?
Horses quickly became more than a motif—they were a muse. Donna graduated from the first equine class at Martin Community College and freelanced for horse magazines. When a New York photographer asked her to write text for his book on miniature horses, she hesitated. “At first I thought it was a scam,” she admits with a grin. “Calling me out of the blue. But he sent me a box of slides, and I sat there with a lightbox and went through them. He was legit.”
That collaboration led to The Book of Miniature Horses, and soon Donna proposed a companion on draft horses. “I thought, well, I can take pictures myself,” she recalls. From there came The Book of Draft Horses, The Book of Mules, and The Book of Donkeys.
Her favorite part wasn’t just the research, but the people. “At book signings for the mule book, some old farmer would always come up and tell me a story—how they plowed fields or worked wagons. I put it out on Facebook asking for more stories, and I ended up adding eight of them to a new chapter. It made the book fun. It’s still selling a few copies every month on Amazon.”
But Donna’s writing life stretches far beyond the barn. “I’ve had twelve books published—probably half of them self-published—and they’re all over the place,” she says. There are cozy mysteries that required careful outlining (“You can’t just fly by the seat of your pants with a mystery, you have to know where you’re going”), poetry collections written “so my kids would have them all in one place,” and even tales of Bigfoot.
Her eyes sparkle as she tells that story. “Daddy used to listen to radio shows about Bigfoot. Later, I came across forums online, stories about sightings. One in particular about a woman with a family of Bigfoot near her farm—that gave me the idea.”
Her first Bigfoot novel centers on a woman who notices missing eggs and chickens before finally seeing the creature herself. “It’s really about her relationships too,” Donna explains, “how her forest ranger friend discouraged her from believing, how her neighbors reacted.” She’s since written a second Bigfoot book, this one about a little girl spending summer with her grandmother on a farm. “She wishes there were other kids around to play with. She gets a playmate, but it’s not like other kids,” Donna says, chuckling.
She is the first to admit her writing process isn’t neat. “I’m a pantser,” she says, using the writer’s term for someone who writes by the seat of their pants. “I just start writing, which is why I struggled with that second Bigfoot book. I thought it was going to be about the grandparents, but I kept hitting dead ends. Finally, I pulled out all of Josie’s chapters and made it about her. Then it came together.”
Other times, deadlines have spurred her forward. “With Pale as the Moon, the publisher asked for the manuscript when I wasn’t finished. I wrote the rest that week,” she says, laughing. “Sometimes you need someone waiting on you.”
Writing isn’t Donna’s only creative outlet. “I did art long before I did much writing outside of school assignments,” she explains. As a child, a landlady noticed her sketches and gifted her lessons with a local artist. Later, she studied some at Martin Community College, though motherhood put painting on hold for years.
“When I moved here, I started painting again,” she says. Watercolors became her favorite medium: “They’re not messy, though they’re hard.” During the pandemic, she turned to collage, raiding her own scraps and clippings. “That kept me busy. I watched a lot of YouTube videos. I didn’t have to shop for materials—you can just use anything.” It was also when she published her Bigfoot novel and republished her mule book. “I stayed busy,” she says simply.
Perhaps nothing illustrates her love of story more than the writers’ groups she’s nurtured for decades. “The first was the Writers’ BBS online. Later, when I moved to Wake Forest, my daughter and I started the Bottom Line Writers at an ice cream parlor. Over time, people moved, businesses closed, so the group shifted.”
Eventually, she founded Second Cup Writers at Coffee Hound in Louisburg. “That was twenty years ago, and we’ve been meeting ever since,” she says. They’ve gathered in gas stations, coffee shops, and now, around her own kitchen table. “We’ve got eight people, and that’s all that will fit.”
Now, the Carolina Piedmont Writer’s Guild, another group she’s part of, hosts “Fifth Saturday” all-day workshops that are open to the public. “It’s usually over about two in the afternoon,” Donna says, the cadence of a teacher in her voice.
Her books find their way to readers through Amazon, visitor centers in Columbia, and the Wild Horse Museum on the Outer Banks. The Wild Horse Adventure Tour even sells her artwork. “That thrilled me,” she says. Bookstore consignments, though, don’t interest her much. “By the time I pay shipping, printing, and commission, there’s not much left. Unless they’re ordering a hundred books, it’s not worth it.”
What remains worth it, though, is the writing itself. “It’s nice to do something you love and get paid for it,” she says. But even without the paycheck, she would still put pen to paper. “Poetry is just for me—it’s a release, to get words on paper. I just like to write.”
Her advice to new writers is plainspoken and practical. “Just write. Don’t worry about grammar or spelling. Get it on paper. You can get help with all the rest. A friend once told me, ‘Do it now.’ If she hadn’t said that, I might have just kept thinking about it forever.”
Donna leads me out to her porch, the light angling through the woods onto her porch. She’s told her stories with the easy cadence of someone who has lived them well: horses and history, Bigfoot and poetry, art and community. Out here, at the end of a long dirt road, she’s created a life stitched together by words and images, a testament to the quiet endurance of storytelling.
Learn more about Donna Campbell Smith’s work at her website and check out her books on Amazon. The Carolina Piedmont Writers Guild has nearly monthly meetings. Visit their website to see the calendar and learn more.
