Mary Malloy is the author of both historical novels and non-fiction history. She has a Ph.D. from Brown University and infuses her books with well-researched details and richly textured writing. As a teacher and writer, she works to bring the past alive by exploring the lives of both ordinary and extraordinary people. Mary has based several life adventures on works of literature: she has followed the pilgrimages of the Wife of Bath, circumnavigated the globe in 80 days, sailed the South Pacific in the wake of Herman Melville and Captain James Cook, and celebrates Jane Austen’s birthday every year with a high tea party.
Mary grew up in the Pacific Northwest and moved to New England in 1981. She has worked at several museums, including the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, and has taught for more than a decade in the Museum Studies program at Harvard University, where she won the Petra Shattuck teaching award in 2010. For 25 years, as a faculty member of the “Sea Semester” program, Mary sailed with college students in the Caribbean, Mediterranean, North Atlantic, on the Northwest Coast, and on several voyages in the South Pacific, including cruises to Hawaii, Tahiti, the Marquesas and New Zealand.
First with the band Morrigan in Seattle, and later with her husband Stuart Frank, Mary has performed the songs of American sailors from the Age of Sail in concerts in North America, Europe, Australia and Japan, and has appeared on several albums.
Mary has a B.A. in Music from the University of Washington, a Master’s Degree in History from Boston College and a Ph.D. in American Civilization from Brown University. Among lessons learned on the voyage through life, she has seen that humans use way too much plastic, and that it is ending up in the ocean. Tell your restaurant server that you don’t need a single-use plastic straw to drink a glass of water.
Mary at the Metropolitan Museum, NYC