Stories Beget Stories: Mary Swander

Mary Swander, an Iowa Women’s Hall of Fame 2022 honoree, is the Artistic Director of Swander Woman Productions, a theatre troupe that performs dramas about food, farming, and the wider rural environment. She tours her dramas, including The Girls on the Roof, Vang, Map of my Kingdom, and Farm-to-Fork Tales, from coast-to-coast and gives solo performances of her own work, playing the banjo, the harmonica and the spoons. Her most recent play, Squatters on Red Earth, about the white settler land grab from the Native Americans, will go on the road in summer, 2023.  She is also the Executive Director of AgArts, a nonprofit designed to imagine and promote healthy food systems through the arts. 

The former Poet Laureate of Iowa, Swander is an award-winning author and has published scores of books of poetry and nonfiction as well as essays, magazine articles, individual poems and radio commentaries in such places as National Public Radio, The Nation, The New York Times Magazine, and Poetry Magazine. She is a member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative, founded Blazing Star Literary Journal and recently began a podcast, AgArts in Horse and Buggy Land. Swander taught creative writing for thirty years at Iowa State University, and she now gives workshops on poetry, nonfiction and playwriting, as well as farmland transition, for other colleges and universities and nonprofit organizations. In Kalona, Iowa (Kickapoo territory), Swander lives in an old Amish one-room schoolhouse, raises goats and has a large organic garden where she grows most of her own food. 

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Visit The EcoTheatre Lab's website at ecotheatrelab.com for links to Mary's work and how to connect with her, the transcript for this episode, and more information about the podcast, production team, and The EcoTheatre Lab.

This podcast series is all about finding ways to talk about climate change with each other. The EcoTheatre Lab wants to also be in dialogue with our listeners!  Please let us know your thoughts on this episode through this brief feedback form (tinyurl.com/artofclimatedialogue)! 

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Thank you to our podcast funders:

Johnson Center for Land Stewardship Policy Emerging Leader Award and North Central Region Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program Graduate Student Grant.*

This podcast is based upon work that is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, under agreement number 2021-38640-34714 through the North Central Region SARE program under project number GNC22-345. USDA is an equal opportunity employer and service provider. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this podcast are those of the individuals and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

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Thank you to our podcast production team:

Vivian M. Cook - Producer, Host, and Editor

Rosie Marcu-Rowe - Editor

Moselle Nita Singh - Cover Artist

Omar de Kok-Mercado - Musician

Charissa Menefee, Taylor Sklenar, and Mary Swander - Consultants