Mary Hussmann
Writer and teacher Mary Hussmann, assistant professor of English, received her MFA from the University of Iowa and specializes in creative nonfiction and nature and environmental writing. She teaches courses in creative nonfiction, nature and environmental writing, poetry writing, and American rivers, as well as teaching off campus in the Adirondack semester program and being the faculty advisor for the Laurentian, a student-run literary magazine.

She has co-edited a book called Transgressions: The Iowa Review Anthology of Innovative Fiction, and has published essays, poetry, book reviews and interviews in anthologies and journals including American Nature Writing 2001, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, Brevity and 5Trope, among others.
Jess Baker '04 says, "Mary is a wonderful professor who is passionate about what she teaches. She pushes her students to strive for excellence, and she is always willing to give help when it is needed."

Sarah Cook '03 has had two classes with Professor Hussmann and will be doing an independent project with her in the fall. Cook says, "Mary Hussmann is truly unique in her ability to allow students to indulge in the romanticism of their own lives while still focusing on reality. She teaches creative non-fiction in such a way that even when you leave the classroom your mind is still at work, recognizing and analyzing the psychology in the events that happen to you each day. Part of this is because she teaches what she does, and the other part is that despite being a professor she makes little distinction between herself and her students, which allows for a close-knit relationship to form. There's recognition that none of us are all that different. Mary helped me not only improve my writing abilities but, more important, to write about the truths and complexities in my life that perhaps I had been too timid to articulate before, and the people whose magic I had been too blind to see."