Walt McDonald was an Air Force pilot, taught at the Air Force Academy, and was Texas Poet Laureate for 2001. He has published eighteen collections of poems and a book of fiction, including All Occasions (University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), Blessings the Body Gave, and The Flying Dutchman (Ohio State, 1998, 1987), Counting Survivors (Pittsburgh, 1995), Night Landings (Harper & Row, 1989), and After the Noise of Saigon (Massachusetts, 1988).

His poems have been in journals including APR, The American Scholar, The Atlantic Monthly, First Things, The Georgia Review, Image, JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association), London Review of Books, The Nation, New York Review of Books, Orion, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, The Sewanee Review, The Southern Review, Stand Magazine (UK), and TriQuarterly.

Walt is Poet in Residence and Paul Whitfield Horn Professor of English at Texas Tech University. He has received two NEA fellowships; the Juniper Prize; four Western Heritage Awards from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame; and six awards from the Texas Institute of Letters, including the Lon Tinkle Memorial Award for Excellence Sustained Throughout a Career.

Native Texans, Walt and Carol have three children and seven grandchildren.

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