WORDFEST

Anne McCrady is a poet, speaker, storyteller, and peace advocate. In addition to her poetry collections, Along Greathouse Road and Letting Myself In, and her chapbook Under a Blameless Moon.

Anne’s award-winning writing appears internationally in many literary journals and dozens of anthologies, as well as online. She also has editorial, review, fiction, and creative nonfiction publication credits, and she is a frequent poetry contest judge, workshop presenter, and motivational speaker In partnership with UT Tyler professor and performance music department chair Dr. Kyle Gullings.

Anne's work has been performed as operatic art song and as libretto, including song lyrics for the contemporary opera Departure, written by Anne and Dr. Gullings.
Anne’s writing has also been used as liturgy in churches and in Unitarian Universalist fellowships where she is a frequent worship speaker. Over the years, her poems have also been read at weddings, memorial services, and community events.

Anne’s honors include being a two-time Pushcart nominee, a longtime councilor for the Poetry
Society of Texas, and the 2018-19 Austin International Poetry Festival Poet Laureate. In addition, two of her collections were state and national prize winners. Anne has served as a Texas Commission on the Arts Touring Artist, a Young Audiences school presenter, and producer of the Texas Poets Podcast which featured Texas Poets Laureate. Anne was the cofounder and codirector of the annual arts-based Art of Peace Festival in Tyler, Texas, a week-long celebration of the U.N. International Day of Peace, which for ten years included an annual international poetry anthology that Anne edited and published.

In 2021, Anne’s poetry was presented at the 2021 Houston REEL poetry Short Poetry Film Festival and was an Honorable Mention in the Reuben Rose Poetry Contest in Israel.

Anne’s educational background was as a Select Student and chemistry and biology graduate at
Stephen F. Austin State University. Anne’s personal interests include the environment, wildlife,
gardening, education, gender equality, peace initiatives, science advancements, progressive politics, social justice initiatives, and arts organizations.

The mother of three adult children and the grandmother of eight kind and creative grandchildren, Anne lives in Tyler, with her husband, Dr. Mike McCrady, who is a family medicine hospitalist. Their daughter, Dr. Kate Hawkins, is a Tyler pediatrician. Sons, Andy in Nacogdoches and Patrick in Virginia, have degrees in Forest Wildlife and Mining Engineering.

Anne is currently working on several poetry and picture book projects. Her work is presented online at InSpiritry.com, her personal website, and at PoetwithaPressPass.com, where she posts timely poems related to news and current topics. She also posts on Substack and Face.