Maryann Hurtt lives down the road from the Ice Age Trail in Wisconsin’s Kettle Moraine and also spends much of her life in Oregon and Oklahoma. After almost thirty years working as a hospice RN, she is now retired. The stories she witnessed all those years and the natural world around her profoundly influence her writing and her life. Prior to and after nursing, she has been a bus-girl, cook, cooking instructor, museum guide, workshop writing facilitator, and a “bibliographical specialist.”
She is happy now pursuing her 4 Rs—reading, (w)riting, running, riding (bike). This involves riding a bright yellow mountain bike tandem with her husband, trail trotting in the Kettle Moraine State Forest, and learning and writing about our environment. She has spent the night in a blind on the Platte River to watch the Sandhill Crane migration and another year, guarded spawning sturgeon fish on the Wolf River.
Aldrich Press published her chapbook, River, in 2016. It is a collection of poetry dealing with resiliency in the face of illness, death, and the natural world. Once Upon a Tar Creek: Mining for Voices from Turning Plow Press came out in 2021. Tar Creek has been called the “worst environmental disaster no one has heard of” and she is heart deep in its story. Back in 2006, Maryann and Cynthia Frozena co-authored Hospice Care Planning: An Interdisciplinary Guide.
Her poetry has been published in a variety of anthologies and on-line & print journals including Portage, Blue Heron Review, Stoneboat Literary Journal, Verse Wisconsin, Your Daily Poem, Verse-Virtual, Snapdragon, Ariel, Poetry Hall, Cancer Poetry Project II, Wisconsin People & Ideas, Bramble, and others. She has received scholarship support from the Oncology Nursing Society, Prague Summer Program, Fishtrap, Ghost Ranch, The Clearing, and Breadloaf-Orion.