Sad News: M. Mark

September 25, 2025

Dear all,

I am writing with the sad news of the death of M Mark, Adjunct Associate Professor of English, who passed away in June. M joined the English Department in 2001 as an accomplished editor and writer, having founded the Village Voice Literary Supplement, and served as an editor for Columbia University Press and for PEN America: a Journal for Writers and Readers. M used her quick-minded intelligence and her experience as an editor to instruct and encourage her many students in first-year seminars and creative writing courses. She retired from Vassar in 2022.

M's mentorship of Vassar students went far beyond her classroom. She shared her many contacts in the publishing world to help Vassar graduates start careers as writers and editors, particularly through her editorship of PEN America, which she continued to edit until 2019. M’s ability to see her Vassar students as writers gave them the courage to take their writing seriously, to become skillful editors of each other’s work, and to believe in the role that writers play in the cultural life of the world.

M herself was also inspired by teaching her students. Her ambitious digital project, which explored retellings through every medium of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth over many centuries and in many cultures grew out of her seminar “Adaptations.” M was not only an inspiring teacher. Her presence on campus as a dedicated and inventive professional in the creative life of New York immeasurably enriched the lives of her colleagues. She will be greatly missed.

Elizabeth H. Bradley, President
Vassar College
Poughkeepsie, NY 12604
@EHBVassar