Mary Stewart Hammond (1940-2022) was best known as a psychologically astute poet whose work has appeared in many magazines and journals including The Alaska Quarterly Review, American Poetry Review, The American Voice, The Atlantic Monthly, Barrow Street, Boulevard, Field, The Gettysburg Review, The Kenyon Review, The New Criterion, The New England Review, The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, The Southwest Review, The Yale Review, and has been included in many anthologies and textbooks. Her first book, Out of Canaan, published by W.W. Norton, received the Great Lakes Colleges Association's New Writers Award for Poetry. She has been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize. Other awards include MacDowell and Yaddo fellowships and a Writer's Community Poet-in-Residence fellowship. Her collection Entering History, was published by W.W. Norton in October 2016.
Born in Richmond, VA, Hammond graduated from the Bryn Mawr School in 1958 and Goucher College in 1968. Though she held several other careers and was active in local and national politics, poetry was the art form dearest to her heart and where she did her most important work. She was also a Master Class teacher of poetry and a private manuscript editor. In 1988, Hammond became one of the first of 20 women notable in their respective fields to be accepted in the Century Association. She also attended The Colony Club and was a member for more than 50 years.
