Commissioner, SRC

Nominated by Mayor Nutter in October 2011, Ms. Cary is currently a senior lecturer in creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania.  Ms. Cary is the author of five books and the founder of the Art Sanctuary, a nonprofit that brings excellent African-American arts and arts education programs to engage more than 10,000 participants each year in urban Philadelphia and produces the unique Celebration of Black Writing Festival in June. Ms. Cary began her writing career as an apprentice for Time in 1980, worked as an Associate Editor at TV Guide, and was later a freelance writer and Contributing Editor for Newsweek. 

In 1982-83, Ms. Cary taught and coached at St. Paul's School, the boarding school in Concord, NH, from which she graduated.  Her first book, a memoir titled Black Ice, uses the story of her own coming of age as a scholarship student there to meditate on growing up, race and gender, and educational expectations in America.  Ms. Cary's first novel, The Price of a Child, fictionalizes the story of a woman who escaped from slavery at Dock Street on the Delaware River ferry in 1855.  This Underground Railroad novel, now on the SDP Grade 11 recommended list, was chosen as the first One Book, One Philadelphia selection in 2003.

At the University of Penn Ms. Cary has received the 1998 Provost's Award for Distinguished Teaching.  For several years, her advanced writing course took students into schools to teach the work of a black writer whom students would meet at the end of the term.

Ms. Cary has received the Philadelphia Award (2003), writing fellowships from Pew Fellowships in the Arts and the Leeway Foundation, and residencies at Yaddo and Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Italy.  

Ms. Cary's father taught science at Shoemaker Junior High School.  Her mother, a beautician, went to college in her 40s to become a special education teacher in the Philadelphia School District.  

Ms. Cary earned a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.A. at Sussex University in England.  She has received doctorates in Humane Letters from Colby College, Keene State College, Chestnut Hill College, Arcadia University, and Muhlenberg College.  

She is married to the Rev. Robert C. Smith, rector of the Memorial Church of the Good Shepherd in East Falls.  They have two daughters, a son, and two grandchildren.