Mary Bryan Stafford

Mary Bryan Stafford grew up in Texas and spent a good part of her childhood and adult years at the ranch that she wrote about in the book, A Wasp in the Fig Tree. She traveled to Virginia to attend William & Mary, majoring in Spanish and English, but she got back to Texas as soon as she could. When she returned, she taught school for 30 years, raised three daughters, coached tennis, sold real estate, and became what she was sure was the oldest living Texan teaching aerobic dance. During this time, she also discovered a new passion…writing. And when she finally retired, she kept on writing, while delving into another new passion…Natural Horsemanship. Mary writes what she knows about. She is a seventh generation Texan and Daughter of the Republic of Texas Her memoir, “Blowout,” a novel excerpt is published in What Wildness is This: Women Write about the Southwest, which won the Willa Award. Her memoir “Epiphany” is published in The Noble Generation III and her poetry is published multiple times in The Texas Poetry Calendar. In addition to winning first place in The Writers’ League of Texas contest, A Wasp in the Fig Tree won the Texas 2015 Author’s Award for Best Historical Fiction. Currently, she has just finished with her next novel entitled, The Last Whippoorwill, another Texas based historical novel.