Evelyn Duncan

Evelyn M. Duncan passed away on Tuesday, September 15, 2026, at Cayuga Medical Center in Ithaca, NY, after a brief illness.

Born in 1924 in Cedar Run, Pennsylvania, she attended school in a one-room schoolhouse. Her family moved to Binghamton, NY, during the Great Depression, and she graduated from Binghamton Central High School, where she was friends with the writer Rod Serling. After graduation, she worked in the proof room of Vail-Ballou Press before attending the New York State College for Teachers at Albany, where she met her future husband, Graham Duncan, and earned a BA and MA in English. She was an editorial assistant at the Cornell University Press and taught English in middle school, high school, and college (Russel Sage and SUNY Oneonta). A poet, her work has appeared in prestigious publications including The New Yorker, Poem, The Comstock Review, The Saturday Review, and The Second Word Thursdays Anthology. Her chapbook, Picking Up, was published in 2008.

She and Graham, her husband of 69 years (who predeceased her in 2019) traveled frequently (even to England, on the Queen Mary) and spent many happy hours hiking, often with friends, in New York State and Pennsylvania. They lived for 35 years in Oneonta, NY, spent their retirement years in Kendal at Ithaca where they continued their writing, and passed the winter months in Cedar Key, FL, where they belonged to a longstanding writers’ group.

Evelyn is survived by her niece Elizabeth Duncan (Robert Fine) of upstate New York, and family; her nephew Brian Duncan (Margaret) of Kendall Park, NJ, her cousin Phyllis Naegely, as well as other relatives and many friends.

She was predeceased by her parents, Minnie M. Dorr (nee Knowlton) and Harold J. Dorr.