Mary Louise Kiernan

Mary Louise Kiernan is the author of a full-length debut poetry collection titled "The Gift of Glossophobia" published by Kelsay Books. 

According to Molly Peacock, author of The Analyst: Poems and Cornucopia: New & Selected Poems, “Mary Louise Kiernan comes into full voice in her splendid debut collection, The Gift of Glossophobia. Not everyone finds the fear of speaking in public a gift…. It takes a lifetime to accrue—and reveal—one’s best creative acts, and Kiernan proves it in The Gift of Glossophobia.”

Adds Mary Makofske, author of World Enough, and Time and Traction, winner of the Ashland Poetry Press Snyder Award,     “From the first poem, when the narrator tells of being stuck in the mud, she’s learning how to get unstuck from what holds her back…. Balanced between the sensual and the spiritual, this honest book welcomes ‘Turning forty on a full moon—let the lunacy begin.’”

Mary Louise Kiernan’s poetry has been published in The Delmarva Review, Pudding Magazine, Hudson Valley Echoes, Chronogram, ArtSpace, Inscape, Tempe Writers Forum, Common Ground Review, Broad River Review, Sanskrit Literary-Arts Magazine, Evening Street Review, and the Metropolitan Diary in The New York Times. 

A former reporter, copywriter, proofreader, and associate editor, Mary Louise’s essays have been published in Catskill Country Magazine, The Times Herald-Record, and in the Long Island Sunday section of The New York Times.She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications in Written Media from SUNY Empire State College.