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Agent: Barbara Lowenstein

Lowenstein Associates Literary Agency
121 West 27th Street, Suite 501
New York, NY 10001

About Mary Mackey

Mary Mackey is a bestselling author and award-winning poet who has written fourteen novels some of which have appeared on the New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller Lists. She is also the author of nine volumes of poetry including The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams, winner of a the 2019 Eric Hoffer Award for Best Book Published by a Small Press and a 2018 CIIS Women’s Spirituality Book Award; Sugar Zone, winner of the 2012 Oakland PEN Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence; and Creativity, a non-fiction exploration of how ideas and bursts of insight come, not just to writers, but to us all. In 2025 Marsh Hawk Press published In This Burning World: Poems of Love and Apocalypse, a collection which not only asks us to imagine what the world will be like as the Earth’s climate changes, but how we can preserve joy and compassion in times of catastrophe.

Mackey’s poems have been praised by Maxine Hong Kingston, Wendell Berry, Jane Hirshfield, Marge Piercy, and Dennis Nurkse for their beauty, precision, originality, and extraordinary range. Her novels are primarily historical fiction and range from her bestseller A Grand Passion, which tells the story of three generations of women involved in ballet; to her Earthsong Series, set in the earth-worshiping cultures of neolithic Europe 6000 years ago. Her novels have been translated into twelve languages including Japanese, Russian, Hebrew, Greek, and Finnish She sometimes writes comic novels under her pen name “Kate Clemens.” She is also a screenwriter and has sold feature-length scripts to Warner Brothers as well as to independent film companies.

Mackey has a B.A. from Harvard College and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from The University of Michigan and is related through her father’s family to Mark Twain. Her literary papers are archived in the Sophia Smith Special Collections Library, Smith College, Northampton, MA. Her collection of rare editions of small press poetry books authored by Northern California poets is archived in the Smith College Mortimer Rare Book Room.

photo credit: Irene Young

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Event Schedule

Friday, October 24, 2025, New York, NY: You're invited to the Marsh Hawk Press 23 Annual Book Launch. Come enjoy a great evening of poetry. Mary Mackey will be reading from her new collection In This Burning World: Poems of Love and Apocalypse along … see full schedule here...

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Interview with Artist Cristina Biaggi on “Habitations of the Great Goddess”

“A Country of Strangers” Interview with Poet D. Nurkse

Interview with Poet Andrea Carter Brown

Interview with novelist and short story writer Valerie Miner

Interview With Poet Indigo Moor

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Mary Mackey on Mirabai The Mystical Indian Poet Who Married God
Ondine De Mer on Mirabai The Mystical Indian Poet Who Married God
Innovative Technique for Creative Writing – The Write Spot Blog by Marlene Cullen on Mary Mackey’s People Who Make Books Happen Interview Series
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