Mary is the founder of Tidings Candle Co., (formerly When’s Low Tide,) a hidden treasure candle company. She has volunteered as Executive Director of The Beachcombing Center, an educational 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and is a former Vice President of the Board of Directors of the North American Sea Glass Association where she also served as Education Chair. She has lectured, done educational exhibits/sea glass identification and/or judged at many sea glass and beachcombing conferences around the country including the International Beachcombing Conference, North American Sea Glass Festival, Santa Barbara Sea Glass & Ocean Arts Festival, Northeast Sea Glass Expo, Great Lakes Beach Glass & Coastal Arts Festival, Santa Cruz Sea Glass and Ocean Arts Festival, Long Beach Island Sea Glass Festival and Suffolk County Sea Glass Festival.
She currently works as Senior Editor at Splice Today and her 25-year professional writing career includes Salon.com, the Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun, Chesapeake Bay, Glassing/Beachcombing magazine, editorial positions at several regional magazines including Chesapeake Family and What’s Up Eastern Shore and a newspaper humor column “Quite Contrary”. She blogged for Katie Couric, appeared on The Today Show, Huffington Post Live and ABC TV News’ Moms Get Real with JuJu Chang. She has served as an Adjunct Instructor for American University’s LEAP program, guest lecturer for the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland and an instructor for The Writer’s Center in Washington, D.C. McCarthy, who served as an elected official on the Centreville Town Council from 2004-2007, founded the blog Pajamasandcoffee.com in 2008.
Mary is the author of the children’s book I SEA, A Beachcombing Treasure Hunt with Kirsti Scott. McCarthy’s debut novel The Scarlet Letter Society was published by Polis Books in June 2014, reaching #1 on the Amazon bestseller list in its genre and was followed by her second and third novels The Scarlet Letter Scandal in November 2015 and The Scarlet Letter Storm in May 2016.
Mary is a mother of four on Maryland’s Eastern Shore where she enjoys kayaking and beachcombing.
Find her on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram.
Contact: marytmccarthy (at) gmail.com
Photo by Jamie Windon