She has been a Fellow, a Senior Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and recipient of many awards, including the Tennessee Conservation Writer of the Year Award, Chicago Friends of American Writers Award, Tennessee Conservation Writer of the Year Award, the Distinguished Southern Writer of the Year Award and the Outstanding Speaker of the Year Award by the Tennessee Teachers of Speech Association. Dykeman, with her husband, was recipient of the prestigious Hillman Award for the best book  published in America on civil liberties, race relations or world peace. The author of numerous books, Wilma Dykeman has taught at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and numerous workshops for writers. She has lectured at Harvard, Duke, the University of Minnesota and many other universities and colleges. Each year she fills some 30 to 50 speaking engagements in all parts of the United States. Dykeman has published articles in the nation's leading magazines and newspapers, reviews in historical and literary journals, and contributed to the Encyclopedia Britannica. A member of the board of Berea College and the University of North Carolina, she serves on many regional and national committees dealing with history, current affairs, conservation, women's issues and studies of literature and the humanities. She has traveled widely throughout the United States and the world, and has written numerous travel articles. Referring to life in Tennessee, writing and traveling, Wilma Dykeman has said, "A sense of one's place and of history makes distant places less strange and the past more pertinent to the present."