Mary Swander

Who is Mary Swander?

Mary Swander is U.S. author of the recent memoirs The Desert Pilgrim and Out of this World as well as three books of poetry, Heaven-and-Earth House, Driving the Body Back, and Succession.

Swander has also co-authored a musical, Dear Iowa, with composer Christopher Frank, which has been produced across the Midwest and on Iowa Public Television.

Her awards include the Whiting Award, a National Endowment for the Arts grant for the Literary Arts, the Carl Sandburg Literary Award, and the Nation-Discovery Award. In 2009, she was named to a two-year term as the Poet Laureate of Iowa. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, she is a Distinguished Professor of English at Iowa State University.

With an endowment from the Iowa Arts Council granted in 2009, she started a poetry website for Iowans called "The Iowa Literary Community"