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John McBride

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I was born and raised in Chicago, near Wrigley Field, and am thus fated to be a lifelong Cubs fan. After high school, I attended John Carroll University, Cleveland, Ohio, on a drama scholarship, graduating in three years, magna cum laude, with a B.A. in English. I received a Ph. D. in English from the University of Illinois and held teaching and administrative positions at the Universities of Illinois, Michigan, and Iowa until I changed to the field of social work, earned a Masters of Social Work degree from the University of Iowa, and directed social service agencies. These included a rehabilitation program for prisoners, a home for runaway and homeless youth, and an emergency aid and referral agency. I also founded the Big Brothers/Big Sisters agency in our area.

I live now in Bettendorf, Iowa, on the Mississipi, with my wife, Nancy, who is still teaching. We have two grown children and two grandchildren. I volunteer at a local soup kitchen for the homeless and spend much of my time at the library, walking and jogging along the Mississippi, and writing, often in that order.

In recent years I have won poetry awards from The Christian Science Monitor, By-Lines, the Mississippi Valley Poetry Contest, the Loras College Writers Conference, Poets' Forum, The Poet's Page and 15 state poetry societies. I was a finalist in our area's poetry competition judged by Robert Pinsky, recent poet laureate of the US, and a semi-finalist for the 2003 Weldon Kees Award from Backwaters Press. I won the second place Founders Award in the 2004 competition of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies.

My poetry has appeared in Bardsong, the Big Muddy, The Christian Science Monitor, Common Threads, Julien's Journal, the Natchez Poetry Anthology, Out of Line, Poetry Motel, Peninsula Poets, Penumbra, Pioneer Press, the Outrider Press, the Daily Palette, + Fifty, Light, Off the Coast, Watermarks, the John Carroll Quarterly, the NeoVictorian/Cochlea, the Rockhurst Review, the Romantics Quarterly, and Lyrical Iowa. It has also been presented over the radio by WVIK, the PBS affiliate at Augustana College, Rock Island, IL.

I am the current president of our regional poetry society, the Quint City Poets, and a board member of the Midwest Writing Center in Davenport, Iowa. I co-edited the Midwest Writing Center's Out Loud Anthology of Poetry, 2006.