Author’s Bio
She worked for the Connecticut Post after majoring in English literature at the University of Connecticut, publishing under her maiden name, Collins. Her early twenties were challenging, having been seriously injured in a car accident resulting from a head-on collision with a drunk driver. A victim of a lack of health insurance, Mary became an English teacher for the sake of benefits and job security. Consequently, she enrolled at Quinnipiac University in the Master of Arts in Teaching programme. Unsatisfied, she also enrolled at Wesleyan University to study poetry/creative writing. She taught at Westshore Middle School in Milford, CT; Betsy Ross Middle School in New Haven, CT; Ansonia Public Schools, CT; and Grossmont High School in La Mesa, CA.
In 1997, she married an Englishman, Nick Thurlow, whom she had met as an undergraduate student. They lived in New York City, where she attended a Writer’s Bootcamp screenwriting course. After the couple moved to Battersea, London, they had their first son. There, Mary wrote a screenplay and continued to create scripts after their move to Harare, Zimbabwe, in 1999. After a spell in Africa, the family returned to London, where a second son was born in 2001.
About Mary Thurlow
A new chapter in story telling begins
Mary J Thurlow was born in California in 1970 and moved to Connecticut as a child. An imaginative and bright student, she was well known for her creative writing throughout her education.
Her husband exited banking in 2002, precipitating a move to California, where he began a career in the film industry. The following year, the couple’s third son was born. A devoted mother, Mary supported Montessori education and her children’s sports teams. Upset by politics, she joined the Fallbrook Democratic Club, where she began taking leadership positions in the State of California Democratic Party and the County of San Diego Democratic Party. During this time, supported by her mother nearby, Mary continued to write the screenplays, including A Woman among Men, Cainmanistan (co-authored with Laura Manning), To Dwell in Zim, Cop Out, and Misanthrope.
The Thurlows oldest son’s conditional offer to Eton College propelled the family back to England, where the three children were enrolled at Lambrook School in Berkshire. The boys continued to Eton and Wellington Colleges, respectively. While all three children boarded during high school and eventually graduated from universities, she re-educated herself in England. Starting from scratch, she obtained British bachelor’s and master’s degrees, this time in Creative Writing, attending the Faber Academy and earning diplomas from Oxford University, the University for the Creative Arts, and the University of Kent.
Dissatisfied with formulaic screenwriting, she wrote her first novel, a passion project. A historical fiction, Sandro & Simonetta in the Time of the Medici was inspired by the Renaissance Art of Alessandro Botticelli. This ten-year project involved extensive research, art lessons, and several redrafts.
Writing poetry remained a constant throughout. Unhappy about the political climate of Brexit and Covid-19, Mary’s poetry became laced with current events, resulting in a chapbook, Quite Contrary, Poems in a UK Election Year. Her first poetry collection is a compilation of selected poems from her lifetime, entitled After the Rain: Poetry of Life, Love, Heartbreak, Motherhood, and Death.
In 2024, Mary and the family pets followed Nick to Dubai, where she worked on her second novel, A Young Woman at the end of the Twentieth Century, a fictional tale inspired by her near-fatal car accident.
The stay in Dubai was short, with the couple relocating back to the UK in 2025. They divide their time between a flat in Richmond upon Thames and a Farmhouse in East Sussex, where Mary continues to write with their two labrador retrievers at her feet.