Welcome!

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there’s a field. I’ll meet you there.

Rumi

Mary McBeth is a Writer, Editor, and Workshop Facilitator.

Born in the American South and raised in Brooklyn, New York by her immigrant Trinidadian family, Mary’s career as a fashion model has taken her to more than 220 cities, in 23 countries. Much of her writing focuses on difficult themes of racial, sexual, multi-cultural, and national identity, sexual assault survival, the global spectrum of abuse,  family trauma, and social justice.

Her memoirs and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Cobalt Review, *82 Review, Argot Magazine, Awakened Voices, and others. She is currently writing her debut memoir, “Perfect,” about our definitions of beauty, as told through her 12 years working as a runway fashion model in Italy. The story is about Intergenerational trauma and mental illness and how the cycle of harm skews reality for people on all sides of it. Set in the late 80s and early 90s it follows her life as a teenage runaway and survivor of sexual abuse who reinvents herself from homeless New York Club Kid to dining with royalty abroad.

Mary is a certified Amherst Writers and Artists (AWA) group workshop leader and the founder and editor-in-chief of Memoir Magazine. She is the creator of the Memoir Prize for Books, the #MeToo Essay Contest, and the Black Memoirs Matter Anthology (coming 2023). She also teaches memoir workshops with Memoir Magazine University and serves as a manuscript editor for their Memoir Critique Service.

Mary is also a Level 3 Reiki master, certified raw vegan chef, Metaphysician, and polyglot, fluent in Italian, German, Spanish, and English.

She lives with her husband in the “Writingest” State, also known as North Carolina.

Follow her on Facebook. Contact Mary with writing-related projects or questions at maryamcbeth(at)gmail(dot)com.

Mary will be teaching a 4-week online Memoir Magazine workshop on writing through trauma, beginning 9/20/22. For more info and to register, click here.

Check out Mary’s recent essays:

The Nervous Breakdown, “Main Street Madness”

Awakenings Magazine, “Girl Stuff”

Argot Magazine, “Call Girl”

Awakenings Magazine, “The Dreamer Awakened”

Star 82 Review, “You Do

Mary McBeth