Rosemary Mahoney

Rosemary Mahoney

Fellow: Awarded 2011
Field of Study: General Nonfiction

Competition: US & Canada

Rosemary Mahoney was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1961. She is the author of five books of nonfiction: The Early Arrival of Dreams; A Year in China (1990), which was a New York Times Notable Book, Whoredom in Kimmage (1993), The World of Irish Women, which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and a New York Times Notable book, A Likely Story: One Summer with Lillian Hellman (1998), and The Singular Pilgrim; Travels on Sacred Ground, which was selected as a best book of the year by both The San Francisco Chronicle and The Christian Science Monitor.

Mahoney’s most recent book, Down the Nile; Alone in a Fisherman’s Skiff, was one of Entertainment Weekly‘s top ten nonfiction books of 2007, was one the National Book Critics’ Circle’s 32 Best Recommended Books of 2007, was one of 100 Notable Books of the year in the New York Times, was ranked #2 on Amazon.com’s list of the ten best travel books of 2007, and was a best book of the year in Publisher’s Weekly and The Christian Science Monitor. Jan Morris selected Down the Nile for Conde Nast Traveller’s list of the best travel books of all time. At present Mahoney is at work on a book about blindness; the book is based on her experience teaching at a the Braille Without Borders International Institute for blind social entrepreneurs in Kerala, India.

Mahoney was awarded the Charles E. Horman Prize for Fiction Writing as an undergraduate at Harvard College. She has received a Henfield-Transatlantic Review Award, a Whiting Writer’s Award, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. She has written for numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post Book World, The London Observer, The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, National Geographic Traveler, O Magazine, and The New York Times Magazine. She lives in Rhode Island and the Republic of Cyprus.

Profile photograph by Aias Dimaratos Tchacos, 2010.

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