Visionary novelist, playwright, poet, teacher, and activist Mary Webb grabbed life with both hands and formed deep friendships with the people she met from all over the world. In her many years as a creative writing teacher she taught to the essence of each person and showed them how to share their stories as writers.
Mary worked tirelessly to change the world. Across 22 years, she hosted 77 Race Dialogues in her living room. She drew people into a community, bringing them together to break bread, converse face to face and support each other. She poured love into the world and planned to create a Social Justice Theatre in 2022.
Her deep relationships with friends and family sustained her through the isolation caused by social distancing. Later, the difficulties of a cancer diagnosis in the midst of a pandemic led to her move to New York where her son and his family cared for her. She died with her son holding her hand.
She would not want us to spend energy mourning her but to celebrate her life by fighting injustice, sharing race dialogues, writing, acting, creating—in ways large and small—a better world. Talk to each other, support each other, love each other, remember Mary and change the world.
Mary Webb’s vision of her ideal future, December, 2019.
