Mary Crockett
Mary Crockett grew up the youngest in a family of misfits in southwestern Virginia. An award-winning poet, she earned her MFA from the University of Virginia, where she was a Henry Hoyns Fellow. Mary’s interest in writing led to a series of lucrative and glamorous careers—including work as a factory slug, staggeringly bad waitress, incompetent secretary, the person who irons name tags in industrial uniforms, toilet-seat hand model, fundraising spy, freelance writer, history museum director, and college English teacher. Her debut YA novel, DREAM BOY, coauthored with Madelyn Rosenberg, came out in 2014, and her solo debut, HOW SHE DIED, HOW I LIVED, was published by Little, Brown in 2018. Mary died in 2023.