George McDade Staples (1947- )

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 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. She 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 Gallery. She regularly contributed opinion pieces for Paci?c Newspapers, especially the South District Journal. 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, and Threads. Her works include Travel Tips for Dream Trips, questions and answers about her six-month, solo trip around the world; Outside the Cave and Outside the Cave II, collections of poetry; and numerous essays, stories, and other poems. She is presently seeking a publisher for a third collection of poems and a collection of stories and essays. Among her several writing projects are two biographies and journals kept during her travels.