The author burying
her dead dream.

Photo by Russ Osterweil
More author photos
available on media page.

The Author – Mary Patrick Kavanaugh

Mary Patrick Kavanaugh has a lively work history that includes time served in a wide range of professions, ranging from private investigator to Avon Lady. Being bossy and entrepreneurial by nature, she has spent the majority of her adult career providing executive management and strategic marketing planning for start-up businesses and organizations.

A writer since the age of eight, Mary’s award winning creative non-fiction has been published in Alligator Juniper, Room of One’s Own, San Jose Mercury News, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Her professional writing has appeared in numerous trade journals. Mary is the 2003 recipient of the nonfiction award from the Soul Making Literary Competition sponsored by the American Pen Women, and winner of a 2004 honorable mention. She was awarded writing fellowships at The David and Julia White Artist Colony, Hedgebrook: Women Authoring Change, and The Vermont Studio Center. She recently published her first book, Family Plots: Love, Death, and Tax Evasion.

Despite public displays of disappointment over the rejection of her novel, the author celebrates having one perfect daughter, one happy marriage with a loving (but now dead) husband, one well-adjusted cat that prefers to live with her aunt, a great day job, and a confusing, yet fun, personal life. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from University of San Francisco (2003), a BA in History from San Francisco State University (1988), good teeth, and an excellent credit rating. Mary currently serves as director for an educational peer networking organization at the University of California at Irvine.