Welcome to our new subscribers! On Mondays, Julie Gammack’s Potluck column hosts a one-hour Zoom session with a notable guest, for paid subscribers. Proceeds benefit the Okoboji Writers Retreat, September 17-20, 2023. To join the conversation, become a paid subscriber. These sessions are fascinating, and the participants are engaged idiscussionsation, too. If you can’t make a session, the video will be sent at a later date.
Mary Swander is our Potluck Zoom Monday lunch guest.
She was a Distinguished Professor at Iowa State University, where she taught for 30 years, and has multiple bullet points to her bio.
Swander also teaches through poetry, essays, books, plays, and podcasts. The rural Amish area, where she calls home, inspired the name for her recent column, Mary Swander’s Buggyland. One of her laugh-out-loud columns appeared just before Thanksgiving: Only One Thing Dumber than a Turkey. All her columns are a pleasure to read. Swander is a teacher at heart, so she’s also incorporating a spotlight on new writers: Mary Swander’s Emerging Voices. (Funds from paid subscribers will pay these newcomers for their work).
Mary Swander is a musician who lives with a companion named Banjo, a dog she acquired when the pandemic started. Quarantine has not ended for Swander as she has an underlying condition that means she cannot take the vaccine, and contracting the virus could be life-threatening. Her life was once filled with performance art, and now the only way she sees folks outside of a computer screen is outdoors and fully masked. She even remotely accepted the prestigious Women’s Hall of Fame award this year.
We’ll talk about this and how it has changed so many aspects of her life.
Swander was Iowa’s Poet Laureate from 2009-2019. What does that entail?
There are multiple layers to this unusually accomplished woman, and we’ll discover as much as we can in one hour tomorrow, Monday, December 12, starting at noon.
Mary is an Iowa Writers’ Collaborative member and a resource for the Okoboji Writers’ Retreat. She earned rave reviews from participants and will be returning in 2023.
And I’m proud to call her a new friend.
If you know someone who would enjoy our Monday Zoom Lunch sessions, why not give them a subscription?
Have you seen Swander perform, attended her workshops, or listened to her podcasts? Tell us about it in the comment section.