Mary Swander

Mary Swander is the co-founder and executive director of AgArts, a non-profit designed to imagine and promote healthy food systems through the arts. She is also the artistic director of Swander Woman Productions, a theatre company that tours plays about agriculture and the wider rural environment.

Swander is an award-winning author of poetry, non-fiction and drama, and is best known for her books Driving the Body Back, Out of this World, and The Desert Pilgrim. She has published widely in such places as The Nation, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, and Poetry Magazine.

Swander lives in an old Amish one-room schoolhouse, and raises sheep, goats, and a large organic garden. www.maryswander.com, www.agarts.org.