Alumni Spotlight: Mary K. Stillwell

I was one of the nine fortunate recipients of a 2018 Nebraska Arts Council Individual Artists Fellowship in Literature. In many important ways, UNO was my first academic step along the path that brought me here.

Although I was born in Omaha, I moved with my family to a Richardson County farm for my high school years, then to Xavier, Kansas, to college, to Kansas City, Missouri, for my first job, and finally to Manhattan where I was employed at New York University, managing the Office of Advertising & Publications for many years. I returned to Omaha in 1993 when my husband, Frank Edler, began teaching at Metropolitan Community College. I continued to freelance in marketing and communications until our children were in school full time, and then I applied to UNO to work toward my master’s degree.

Although I was an older student out of school for many years, the faculty and my fellow students in the Department of English at UNO were welcoming. I had written and published poetry, including my first collection, Moving to Malibu (Sandhills Press), and wanted to return to get a better grounding in American literature. My advisor and mentor was the amazing Susan Naramore Maher, and I was fortunate to study with Bruce Baker, Phil Smith, J.J. McKenna, Patricia Smith, and others. I wrote my first paper for Dr. Maher’s Plains Literature seminar on Ted Kooser’s collection, Weather Central, launching my interest in Nebraska poets and my friendship with the poet, who served as U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006. I was a teaching assistant at UNO until my last semester when I received a presidential fellowship.

At Dr. Maher’s urging, I applied for doctoral study at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. My intention was to continue Cather studies with Dr. Susan J. Rosowski, noted Cather scholar who had at one time taught at UNO and now was editor of the Cather Scholarly Edition. I received a six-year teaching fellowship. Although the University offers a choice of scholarly and creative tracks, I was able to take classes in both areas and continued to build on my UNO foundation. I began serious research in Nebraska poetry and completed my dissertation (in 2004) focusing on the work of William Kloefkorn, Ted Kooser, Hilda Raz, and Kathleene West.

Currently, I’m touring the state, representing the 2018 One Book One Nebraska selection, Nebraska Presence, an anthology of contemporary Nebraska poetry that I co-edited with Greg Kosmicki, publisher of Backwaters Press in Omaha. We are giving readings and workshops in libraries, bookstores, and literary centers. I have two major on-going writing projects: the completion of a new collection of poems, tentatively titled News from Dream Country, and a cross genre prose work, Why Greece.

Maps & Destinations, new and selected poems, was published in 2014 by the Stephen F. Austin State University Press. In 2013, the University of Nebraska Press published The Life and Poetry of Ted Kooser, my examination of the poet’s work and its relationship to his life. Fallen Angels, my chapbook, appeared the same year (Finishing Line Press). My poetry and criticism have appeared in The Paris Review, The Massachusetts Review, Prairie Schooner, Midwest Quarterly, South Dakota Review, The New York Quarterly, Midwest Quarterly, Book of Re-reading of Recent American Poetry II, Women’s Studies, and numerous anthologies. I also served on the selection committee for the current Nebraska state poet. Frank and I have retired from teaching in Lincoln. Our grown children also live in Lincoln. We are the grandparents of two exceptional young grandsons.

Thanks to UNO and to the faculty and staff of the English Department, who nurtured my dreams and set me upon this journey.

--Mary K. Stillwell