About
“Good writing can force us to think and think critically; we can theorize, organize, analyze, and synthesize better.”
Georgia
Georgia Stewart McDade, a Louisiana native who has lived in Seattle more than half her life, loves reading and writing. As a youngster, she wrote and produced plays for her siblings and neighbors and collaborated with church youth to write plays for special occasions. Earning a Bachelor of Arts from Southern University, Master of Arts from Atlanta University, and Ph. D. from the University of Washington, the English major spent more than thirty years teaching at Tacoma Community College but also found time to teach at Seattle University, the University of Washington, Lakeside School, Renton Technical College, and Zion Preparatory Academy.
As a charter member of the African-American Writers’ Alliance (AAWA), McDade began reading her stories in public in 1991 and credits AAWA with making her regularly write poetry. For a number of years, she has written poems inspired by art at such sites as Gallery 110, Seattle Art Museum, Onyx Fine Arts Collective, and Columbia City Art Gallery. She wrote opinion columns for Pacific Newspapers, especially the South District Journal, for several years. Convinced all of us can learn to write well, McDade conducts and participates in a variety of writing workshops. “Good writing can force us to think and think critically; we can theorize, organize, analyze, and synthesize better,” says she.
A prolific writer, she has works in AAWA anthologies I Wonder as I Wander, Gifted Voices, Words? Words! Words, Threads, and Voices That Matter. Her works include Travel Tips for Dream Trips, questions and answers about her six-month, solo trip around the world; Outside the Cave, four volumes of poetry; and numerous essays, stories, and poems. Thanks to Michael B. Maine’s We Out Here Festival and Merri Ann Osborne’s Mahogany Festival, McDade can now add another genre to her work: her first professionally produced play, Changing Oil.
She volunteers at community radio station KBCS (91.3 FM) and along with Jim Cantú cohosts KVRU’s (105.7 FM) Hearts and Soul. Among her several writing projects are the biographies of her high school principal and pastor and the publication of her dissertation and the journals kept on her six-month odyssey around the world. McDade’s wish list includes peace in the world and long, healthy lives for all of us.