Mary Kathleen Mehuron is a career educator who made a splash with her first book, Fading Past, an autobiographical novel whose protagonist, like Mary Kathleen, grew up Irish-Catholic in New Jersey.
The Opposite of Never was Mary Kathleen’s second novel, and to finish it, she traveled alone to Havana in January 2015 in order to experience the city before it became Americanized. It was selected for Breakout Novels of 2018, IndiePicks; 16 of the Most Anticipated Books of 2018, Brit & Co; Six Books About Family to Cherish This Spring, Buzzfeed; Ten Heartwarming Tales About Family, Culturalist; 12 Inspiring Me-Time Reads Perfect for Mother's Day, Working Mother and others. On the publication date USA Today ran an author Q&A about the author and other interviews followed. Manhattan Book Review said, “The people in this novel feel imminently familiar and their struggles real.”
Last year, Mary Kathleen began shopping her new story The Belonger, about an American woman who becomes reluctant hero when she’s caught in a monster hurricane in the Caribbean. Harlequin’s Carina Press has it at the moment as they consider acquisition. She breathlessly awaits their decision.
In 2020 the author was accepted for the first and only Ultimate Novel Writing Course by Jericho Writers. The program’s goal was to produce a polished novel in one year’s time— manuscript, synopsis, query letters, elevator pitch, and personal pitches delivered to literary agents at the end of the course. This proved overly ambitious for many and the program has since been altered. But she did it and completed a new novel, S. Beach Drag. A LGBTQ coming of age story.
Mary Kathleen lives and teaches in a ski town in Vermont where she and her husband raised three sons, she is an occasional contributor to the local newspaper, The Valley Reporter and writes curriculum daily for private students. She takes extended time to work on her novels on Grand Turk Island and in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom.
