Life
1940-2021; b. Chicago, 9 Nov. 1940, descended from a family with roots in Co. Tipperary; ed. Sacred Heart School and grad. Barat College, Lake Forest, Illinois; first worked on society desk at Chicago Times; moved to Ireland and joined Irish Times as a journalist, 1965, ultimately becoming the chief sub-editor at the newspaper before retiring with illness in 2001; wrote written widely on women’s affairs; m. Des Geraghty, 1969 (with whom two dgs.), and later separated; became Mother of the Chapel [Trade Union] and an active NUJ member;
co-founder of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement with Maeve Donnellan, Nell McCafferty, Christina Murphy, Caroline Walsh and others; author of The Devil’s Card (1992), a novel about the investigation of prominent Irish American Dr. Patrick Cronin in Chicago at the turn of the century in which an Irish-American forebear of hers was seemingly involved; also If Only (Poolbeg 1997); d. 30 November 2021 in a Bray nursing home after long illness; there is a photo-port. in Brandon Catalogue (1994/5). DIL
Works
Fiction, The Devil’s Card (Dingle: Brandon; NY: St. Martin’s 1992), 243pp.; with Kate Cruise O"Brien, If Only: Short Stories of Love and Divorce (Poolbeg Press 1997), 320pp.
Note: namesake Mary Maher is the author of novels and poetry collections incl. SnowFruit (Stride Publ. 1991) and Dusting Round the Jelly (1993) [see GetTextBooks.com - online; accessed 21.10.2023.]
Reference
Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, Vol. 5 (Derry 2001) contains extracts from her journalism and a bio-bibliographical notice.
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