Jack Cady

Jack Cady (March 20, 1932 – January 14, 2004

Cady was a conscientious objector during the Korean War, but served in the U.S. Coast Guard in Maine. He later had several jobs, including truck driver, auctioneer, landscaper and finally university instructor. He first taught creative writing at the University of Washington from 1968 until 1973, and he then had a number of brief teaching stints at colleges in Illinois, Pennsylvania and Alaska from 1973 to 1978. During 1985 he began teaching writing at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, and he retired from that job in 1998. Cady married fellow writer Carol Orlock in 1977, and they remained married until his death. Cady's collected literary papers were donated to the Mortvedt Library at Pacific Lutheran University during the spring of 2006.

Cady is perhaps known best for the Nebula-winning novella "The Night We Buried Road Dog" (1993). Stories of his were included in the Best American Short Stories anthologies of 1971 and 1972.

His dystopian novel McDowell's Ghost concerns a modern-day Southerner who keeps seeing the ghost of an ancestor killed during the Civil War; the spirit helps McDowell obtain justice for a female friend who was raped.

Another of Cady's books was The American Writer: Shaping a Nation's Mind, a survey of American literature.