Mary Stewart Hammond was reared in Roanoke, Virginia and Baltimore, Maryland. Her poems have appeared in many magazines, including American Poetry Review, The Atlantic Monthly, Boulevard, Field, The Gettysburg Review, The New Criterion, The New England Review, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, the Yale Review, and many anthologies. She has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize and has poems forthcoming in The Alaska Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, Shenandoah, and The Southern Review.

Her book, Out of Canaan, published by W.W. Norton, received the Great Lakes Colleges Association's Best First Collection of Poetry Award. Other awards include MacDowell Colony and Yaddo fellowships, and a Writer's Community Poet-in-Residence fellowship. She lives and teaches in New York City.

Mary Stewart gives readings, teaches workshops, and is willing to travel.