Mary Woodbury

Mary Woodbury is a technical writer by day and a fiction writer by night. She has been a member of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment and is an ongoing member of Nova Scotia Extinction Rebellion, Climate Fiction Writers League, International League of Nature Writers, Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia, and Nova Scotia’s Ecology Action Centre. She’s also a core writer at Artists and Climate Change. She has also written for Impakter, Chicago Review of Books, SFFWorld.com, Fjords Review, Ecology Action Centre, and here at ClimateCultures. Her article ‘A History of Eco-fiction’ was translated at Chinese Science Writers Association. Her three-part series on ecological weird fiction, originally published at SFFWorld.com, was translated at Zest Letteratura Sostenibile (part I, part 2, part 3). Mary is also a social media outreach volunteer for the Climate Fiction Writer’s League.

Mary Woodbury (pen, Clara Hume) is the author of the Wild Mountain Series: Back to the Garden (Moon Willow Press, 2018) and, upcoming, The Stolen Child (Dragonfly Publishing, 2022) as well as The Adventures of Finn Wilder’s children’s series, Finn’s Tree Alphabet (Dragonfly Publishing, 2021), with more to come, and Bird Song (Dragonfly Publishing, 2020). Mary contributed to the book Tales from the River (Stormbird Press, 2018) and edited the anthology Winds of Change: Short Stories About the Climate.

She likes to think of her books as rewilded fiction; nature and environment are key to the stories. She is a graduate of Purdue University, with degrees in English and anthropology, and lives in Nova Scotia with her husband. They maintain a 2-acre property with beehives, over 40 newly planted trees, and much more. You can read more about her at her blog.

Mary is one of our members featuring their work as part of the ClimateCultures Quarantine Connection series. We shared an excerpt from her new story, Bird Song: A Novella, on Day 5 of the 40-day series.

Mary’s ClimateCultures Posts:

Where Waters and Fictions Meet

Where Waters and Fictions Meet

Writer and curator Mary Woodbury shares eight novels about water where fact and fiction mingle, tied by imagination, to reveal important truths about our shifting relationships with this vital and lively agent in an era of climate crisis. Read More
Rising Appalachia

Rising Appalachia

Writer Mary Woodbury finds deep resonance in the music of Rising Appalachia, who draw on the rural landscapes of her family, and whose musical fusion offers ideas of resilience and community in the face of change and loss. Read More
A History of Eco-fiction, Part 2

A History of Eco-fiction, Part 2

Author Mary Woodbury, who outlined some of the common ground that helps 'define' eco-fiction in Part 1, looks at how this super-genre has grown and diversified in recent years. Her story returns to a family trip to Ireland. Read More
A History of Eco-fiction, Part 1

A History of Eco-fiction, Part 1

Author Mary Woodbury opens a two-part series on the development of eco-fiction: a form with many roots, which is "not so much a genre as a way to intersect natural landscape, environmental issues, and wilderness into other genres." Read More