Mary Quade teaches creative writing, including poetry, creative nonfiction, fiction and screenwriting. Her teaching philosophy is “Get writers into the world. Get the world into writers.” Quade says, “The most helpful thing I can do for my students is get them to forget about having answers and instead think about questions. As a teacher, I stress that the best writing comes from interaction with the concrete stuff of life. I ask my students to start with this stuff, and grow to know its nature through curiosity.” She has traveled with students to the Galapagos for the course Natural History in the 21st Century.

Education

• M.F.A., The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop
• A.B., University of Chicago

Research Interests

• Contemporary literature
• Contemporary and historical perspectives on the American frontier
• Travel, science, and environmental writing
• Comics
• Photography
• Nuclear history

Her poems and essays cover a broad range of topics, including (but not limited to) natural history in the Galapagos, steam engines, prairies, oil spills, insect collections, Superman, atomic bombs, the Nicene Creed, and passenger pigeons.

Selected Publications

• Local Extinctions (Gold Wake Press)
• Guide to Native Beasts (Cleveland State University Poetry Center)
• “The Collection” in Creative Nonfiction: Twenty Essays and Interviews with the Writers (SUNY)
• “Old Iron: A Restoration” in From Curlers to Chainsaws: Women and Their Machines (Michigan State University)
• “Rickey Henderson Breaks the Record for Stolen Bases in a Season, Milwaukee, 1982” in New Poetry from the Midwest 2014 (New American Press)

Fun Facts

• Quade has raised mallard ducks, chickens, bobwhite quail, and monarch butterflies.
• A taxidermied Canada goose hangs on her office wall.

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