About me
For 25 years I worked in Washington, DC, including stints as a writer and editor for National Geographic and the Smithsonian, and taught part-time for 12 years at Johns Hopkins’ MA in Writing program, where I won the Teaching Award. I left the U.S. Capitol for Connecticut to be closer to family, and for a full-time tenured position as a professor of Writing & Publishing/Creative Writing at Central CT State University. I devoted 19 years to the university during which the statewide nonprofit Campus Compact recognized me as its community engaged college educator of the year and I won the Excellence-in-Teaching Award at CCSU.
In spring 2026 I will leave my job at CCSU and launch a new business, the Collins Story Exchange, as a Personal Historian for Hire for individuals and family-run businesses that want a magazine-quality publication about their story for family, friends and their community! I will also start offering writing workshop at the Farmington Valley Arts Center (FVAC) in Avon. For the last eight years, I have taught the nonfiction writing workshop for Yale’s Summer Writing Program. I continue my work as a nationally-recognized, award-winning author of essays and books. See Writings for more information about my publications.
Select Awards & Honors
TEACHING
Winner, Campus Compact College Community Educator Award, awarded to one professor each year for their work with the community. Nearly every private and public college and university in the state participates in CCC, which highlights pairing with community partners. My nonfiction undergraduate students worked with mothers who lost sons in the Vietnam War to produce a magazine, which we called the Gold Star Magazine Project. I raised $10,000 to produce 1000 magazines of their stories, done in conjunction with my student writers, and we gave them out for free to Gold Star families across the state.
Director, CCSU Center for Teaching and Faculty Development, for three years. The Center created the Mary Collins Service Award to recognize faculty at CCSU for their service to other faculty.
Winner, Teaching Award, Central Connecticut State University, given to just one full-time faculty each year.
Winner, Teaching Award, Johns Hopkins MA in Writing Program, where I taught nonfiction workshops part-time for 12 years and ran events and special programs.
WRITING AWARDS
Poynter Fellow, which funded a visiting authors visit by me and my son and co-author, Donald Blake Collins, to Yale's Medical School for a special program on working with families of transgender children.
Awarded Best Memoir of the Year by the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA), for At the Broken Places: A Mother and Trans Son Pick Up the Pieces, Beacon Press,
Awarded Best Essay of the Year (twice) by the American Society of Journalists and Authors for an essay in the Washington Post, Don't Have a Seat, about recovering from back surgery and our debilitating sitting culture; and for The Bookcase, originally published in the Potomac Review
New York Public Library ranked my Young Adult book, Airborne: A Photobiography of Wilbur and Orville Wright (National Geographic Books) a Top 10 YA book of the year
Awarded best YA book of the Year by the American Society of Journalists and Authors for Airborne: A Photobiography of Wilbur and Orville Wright
OTHER HONORS
National Park Service, Artist-in-Resident, Petrified Forest, with former National Geographic Photographer and National Wildlife Federation Photographer and Editor Susan McElhinney. We profiled people who work, volunteer or visit the park. The exhibit was in the Visitor’s Center and we had a special show at Wolf Trap in Virginia, the National Park Service’s cultural venue.
ABOVE: Mary with CCSU students for a reading event for the Writing Minors Program; Mary and her son Blake Collins at the Harvard Bookstore for a signing event for their book; Mary during an interview recording at WNPR studios in CT.