Mary Dana Marks served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kerman, Iran from 1964-66. After earning a master's degree in library science from the University of Michigan, she returned to Iran where she worked as librarian of the UNESCO-affiliated International Institute for Adult Literacy Methods in Tehran and taught English as a second language. She and her family left Iran five years before its 1979 revolution. Marks spent most of her career as library director for the Museum of the American Indian in New York. Editor of the award-winning Native America in the Twentieth Century: An Encyclopedia, she lives with her husband in New York City.