Mary Sheeran

Mary Sheeran, an award-winning novelist living in New York City, has, in addition to writing, performed in cabaret, opera, and musical theater as well as in straight dramatic plays. She has also been a theater critic for the theatrical trade papers Show Business and Backstage and a dance critic for Life Upon the Sacred Stage, the theatrical blog written by critic and journalist Retta Blaney. Mary holds a bachelor's degree from Saint Mary's College of Notre Dame, Indiana, where she studied history, theater, and music, and a Master of Divinity degree from New York Theological Seminary.

About Her Books

"Idylls of the Collar," Sheeran's latest novel, won the 2025 International Impact Award in two areas: Women's Fiction and Spirituality as well as the 2025 Independent Press Award for Christian Fiction. The story centers on two friends, Janene Shannon and Meg Madigan, who meet in a seminary class. Meg, once a Catholic nun, is aiming for ordination in the Episcopal church. Janene, a writer, is auditing the class to read the Old Testament through the eyes of feminist spirituality. The two women become great friends, and Janene joins Meg's church while supporting her journey. Even as she supports Meg's struggles with the ordination process, Janene wonders about her own call to the priesthood, which Meg supports. After Meg is ordained, tensions develop in their friendship. After her ordination, Meg begins to behave in an arrogant manner, and their rector does nothing to stop her, which damages the parish. Another assistant priest in the parish is fired. These acts, combined with church politics, damage Janene's own spiritual path with the diocese. Struggling with issues of bitterness and disillusionment, she must decide whether to fight back - and if she can forgive the two people she has loved the most in her journey.

Sheeran's novel, "A Dangerous Liberty," was the 2020 Romance winner in the Independent Press Awards. This is the second novel Sheeran wrote set in Virginia City and San Francisco of the 1860s. World-renowned pianist Elisabeth Winters returns to the United States from Europe to discover her life is in danger. Though she wants nothing but to perform her concerts, and is determined to be recognized as a composer, she finds herself embroiled in layers of political and personal turmoil that have intertwined through the years she's been abroad. Her father, an abolitionist Senator, was assassinated during the Civil War, and now that she has returned, Elisabeth realizes she could be a target herself. When she meets William de la Cuesta, a Spanish American man fighting to regain the land stolen from his family, she can't deny her immediate feelings of trust. Yet there is something that disturbs her about him as well, a memory she can't grasp. He may be one of the people wanting to kill her. As she invokes controversy on many levels - her music, her activities for women's rights - her world becomes more chaotic with the treachery she discovers taking place in her own inner circle.

"Banished From Memory", cited for excellence in historical fiction by the Independent Press Awards in 2019 and called "a masterpiece" by the podcast Chapter One, is set one hundred years later than "A Dangerous Liberty," in 1960, and it begins with the thirty-second Academy Awards. Sixteen-year-old Dianna Fletcher belongs to a family of actors, and she herself has performed in movies since she was five. Now, however, she fears she is losing her talent and failing to live up to her family's legacy. When she does land a part, practically forced on the director, she finds an unexpected enemy in brilliant actor and womanizer, Bill Royce, who not only attacks her confidence but holds a deep grudge against her family. Dianna comes to believe Bill's resentment is related to her suspicion that her parents harbor a secret linked to the blacklist. But even as their friendship grows despite their misgivings about each other, Bill will not confess what he knows. As Dianna struggles with her career in a rapidly changing industry, she urges Bill to share his dark past with her, only to discover secrets that could destroy her family's prestige and power.

"Quest of the Sleeping Princess" won the Independent Press Award for Literary Fiction in 2025. The story unfolds during a gala performance of the New York City Ballet in 1988, when the company is struggling to survive after the death of its founder, George Balanchine. It is a novel about making steps through the poetry and terror of living in the Now. While caring for her mother, Susan McFadden dreams, aspires to be a singer, and pursues the visions of Balanchine via myths of western culture, particularly the story of the Sleeping Beauty. We watch Susan watch the ballets, read, struggle with falling in love, negotiate the minefields of the worlds of opera and ballet, and we watch her watch her mother fight death. Through all of this, Susan becomes herself transformed into the artist she dreamed of being.

"Who Have the Power," Sheeran's first novel in 2006, was the beginning of her exploration of Virginia City and San Francisco during the era of the Comstock Lode. It tells the story of Elisabeth Barclay, a young suffragist in 1866 appalled to learn she is half Washo and unaware she is anxiously watched by that tribe and by Masete, the brilliant warrior to whom she was promised. Her struggles with her sense of justice and scorn for her mother's people, increasingly powerful visions by their lake, Tahoe, and growing attraction to Masete come to a head in a battle during which Elisabeth discovers she must claim her role in an ancient prophecy that transcends time. This is a novel about the tragedy of lost history and the persistent power of the imaginative life.