Email walt.mcdonald@ttu.edu
©Walt McDonald, 2006
Updated 08/30/06
Walt McDonald was an Air Force pilot, taught at the Air Force Academy, and served as Texas Poet Laureate in 2001. In May 2002, he retired from Texas Tech University as Paul Whitfield Horn Professor of English and Poet in Residence. Native Texans, Walt and Carol have three children and eight grandchildren.
Walt has twenty-two collections of poems and a book of fiction, including Faith Is a Radical Master (Abilene Christian University Press, 2005); Climbing the Divide (University of Notre Dame Press, 2003); Great Lonely Places of the Texas Plains (Texas Tech University Press, 2003--Walt's poems paired with color photos by Texas State Photographer Wyman Meinzer); All Occasions (University of Notre Dame Press, 2000); Blessings the Body Gave, and The Flying Dutchman (Ohio State University Press, 1998, 1987); Counting Survivors (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995); Night Landings (Harper & Row, 1989); A Band of Brothers: Stories from Vietnam (Texas Tech University Press, 1989); Rafting the Brazos (University of North Texas Press, 1988); and After the Noise of Saigon (University of Massachusetts Press, 1988). He has published more than 2,300 poems in journals including American Poetry Review, The American Scholar, The Atlantic Monthly, First Things, JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association), London Review of Books, New York Review of Books, Poetry, The Sewanee Review, and The Southern Review.
He has received the Texas Book Festival Bookend Award in 2004--a lifetime award "for Outstanding Contributions of Texas Literature"; six awards from the Texas Institute of Letters, including the Lon Tinkle Memorial Award for Excellence Sustained Throughout a Career; four Western Heritage Awards from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame for his books, including Whatever the Wind Delivers: Celebrating West Texas and the Near Southwest (Texas Tech University Press, 1999)--Walt's poems, with archival photos selected by Janet Neugebauer from Tech's Southwest Collection, with a Foreword by Laura Bush, when she was First Lady of Texas; and the Western Writers of America’s Spur Award in 2005 for Best Book of Poems.
Every day's a gift. Life is grass, stunningly brief, but abundant in so many ways. Walt and Carol believe John Donne said it best on Christmas Day in London in 1624: "All occasions invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons."
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