Dr. Washington has long and close ties to the Contemporary American Authors Lecture Series. She was its second guest author on April 20, 1990, arguing that women writers must “resist the romance narrative” and “invent new lives for women that are not dependent on the traditional marriage script.” It was the first of many stirring addresses Dr. Washington has given in Alumnae Hall.

Washington is author of The Other Blacklist: The African American Literary and Cultural Left of the 1950s (Columbia University Press, 2014) and of dozens of essays about African American literature and culture. She is editor of Black-Eyed Susans: Classic Stories by and about Black Women (1975), Midnight Birds: Stories by Contemporary Black Women Writers (1980), Invented Lives: Narratives of Black Women 1860-1960 (1987), and Memory of Kin: Stories About Family by Black Writers (1991). She appears in the 2018 PBS documentary Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart.

Born in Cleveland, Washington received her B.A. from Notre Dame College. In 1976, she received her Ph.D. from the University of Detroit where she served as Director of the Black Studies Program which she was integral in establishing. She also taught at St. John’s College of Cleveland, Harvard Divinity School, Wellesley College, Mills College, and the University of Massachusetts, Boston before moving to the University of Maryland where she is now Distinguished University Professor of English. A past president of the American Studies Association, Dr. Washington has received the Lyndhurst Prize, the Candace Award, and the Richard Wright Award for Literary Criticism. She has also received honorary degrees from several institutions, including Marygrove College.

In recognition of Dr. Washington’s many contributions to literary scholarship, Lillian and Don Bauder, who had already endowed the Contemporary American Authors Lecture Series, established the Mary Helen Washington Writing Awards in 2011 to encourage high school students and now others in the Detroit community to respond in writing to the works of the guest authors in this series.