About me
I have written award-winning nonfiction books on a broad range of subjects including a history of National Public Radio, a photobiography of the Wright Brothers for National Geographic, a study of our sedentary culture, and a joint-memoir with my transgender son on our journey as child and parent. My essays and features have appeared in Smithsonian Magazine, the New York Times, Lit Hub, Out Magazine, Washington Post, Boston Globe, and other outlets. For more information about my writing, see the WRITINGS tab.
As an author I’ve done extensive book tours on a national scale and been a featured speaker in all sorts of situations including the commencement speaker for Boston University’s School of Public Health, guest author and Poynter Fellow for Yale Medical School, lead panelist at the American Psychological Association, keynote for the National Center for Biking and Walking, and others. My son and I did many radio shows across the country, including a show with “Where We Live” for CT Public Radio that won a Gracie Award, the highest award in broadcasting for women journalists.
I have taught nonfiction writing for 30 years and won the Teaching Award while teaching part-time for Johns Hopkins University’s MA in Writing Program (12 years) and again as a full-time tenured Professor and Director of the Writing Minors at Central Connecticut State (19 years). For the last eight summers I have led a nonfiction writing workshop for the Yale Summer Writing Program. In 2026 I will leave my full-time position at CCSU to finish a new book and launch my business as a Personal-Historian-for-Hire for my startup, the Collins Story Exchange, which will also include my work as a Book Proposal Editor.
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.