Mary Hood (born September 16, 1946 in Brunswick, Georgia) is an award-winning fiction writer of predominantly Southern literature, who has authored two short story collections - How Far She Went and And Venus is Blue - and a novel, Familiar Heat. She also regularly publishes essays and reviews in literary and popular magazines.
Mary Hood was born in Brunswick, Georgia, on September 16, 1946, to William Charles Hood and Mary Adella Katherine Rogers Hood.
Hood’s father was an aircraft worker, originally from Manhattan, New York. Her mother was a Latin teacher, originally from rural Cherokee County, Georgia. The two met during WWII at a USO event in Brunswick.
At the age of two, Hood and her family moved from coastal Brunswick to White, Georgia, where they briefly lived with her maternal grandfather, Claude Montgomery Rogers, who was a Methodist minister. Shortly thereafter, the family moved to Douglas County, and, subsequently, multiple other places across rural north and south Georgia.
Hood graduated from Worth County High School in Sylvester, Georgia, and then moved to Clayton County just outside of Atlanta, where she commuted back and forth to Georgia State University.
After obtaining a degree in Spanish and working for two years as a librarian in Douglasville, Georgia, Hood bought land and moved to Cherokee County near Woodstock, Georgia.
Hood lived in Woodstock (in the small lake community of Little Victoria on the banks of Lake Allatoona) for 30 years, where she witnessed the small, rural town turn into a bedroom community for burgeoning Atlanta — much of which is fictionally chronicled in her short story collection And Venus is Blue..
In the early 2000s, she left the now metro-Atlanta-Woodstock area for the quiet countryside of Jackson County, Georgia, where she currently resides.
In 1996, she held the Grisham Chair (after John Grisham) at the University of Mississippi, Oxford. She was the first writer-in-residence at Berry College in 1997-1998, Reinhardt University in 2001 and Oxford College of Emory University in 2009. Additionally, she was the visiting writer at Centre College in Kentucky in 1999 and has taught classes at the University of Georgia. In the spring of 2010, she held the Ferrol Sams Distinguished Chair of English at Mercer University.
Kennesaw State University in Georgia named her the Writer of the Decade in honor of the tenth anniversary of the Contemporary Literature and Writing Conference.
Mary Hood the fiction writer should not be confused with Dr. Mary Hood, author of the Joyful Home Schooler and other books. These are two separate individuals.
Mary Hood's work has been tapped by Hollywood - with interest in How Far She Went by Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward and Sydney Pollack. Additionally, Peter Fonda and Jane Fonda have expressed interest in her fiction. A screenplay adaptation has been written for her novel Familiar Heat.
Mary Hood is currently working on a novel titled The Other Side of the River, as well as a short story collection tentatively titled Survival, Evasion, and Escape.
Three of her stories, Virga,Leaving Room and Witnessing, were published in The Georgia Review in 2000, 2006 and 2010, respectively.
And Venus is Blue (Ticknor & Fields, 1986) - title story from the short story collection is the novella
Short Story Collections
How Far She Went (University of Georgia Press, 1984)
And Venus is Blue (Ticknor & Fields, 1986)
Forewords, Contributing Chapters, Published Essays
Rosiebelle Lee Wildcat Tennessee by Raymond Andrews - Foreword by Mary Hood (University of Georgia Press, Reprint, 1988)
Why Stop? - Essay by Mary Hood (The Gettysburg Review, Winter 1988) (The Best American Essays, 1989)
The Sacrilege of Alan Kent by Erskine Caldwell - Foreword by Mary Hood, Wood Engravings by Ralph Frizzell (University of Georgia Press, 1995)
"Tropic of Conscience," an historical essay on Northwest Georgia for The New Georgia Guide (University of Georgia Press 1996)
Anthologies Containing Work
The Best American Essays (1989)
Best American Short Stories
Stories: Contemporary Southern Short Fiction edited by Donald Hays (1989)
Editor's Choice
Georgia Voices: Fiction edited by Hugh Ruppersburg (1992)
Homeplaces: Stories of the South by Women Writers edited by Mary Ellis Gibson (1991)
The Literary Dog: Great Contemporary Dog Stories edited by Jeanne Schinto (1990)
New Stories from the South
The Pushcart Prize Anthology
Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft by Janet Burroway (1992, 3rd ed.)
Magazines Featuring Hood's Prose
Art & Antiques
Gray's Sporting Journal: The Bird Hunting Book (August 2000) with Clyde Edgerton, O. Victor Miller, Bailey White and John Yow
Harper's Magazine
North American Review
Southern Magazine
Literary Reviews Featuring Hood's Work
The Georgia Review
The Gettysburg Review
Kenyon Review
Ohio Review
Yankee
Interviews
Wired for Books: Audio Interview with Mary Hood by Don Swaim (1987)
North Georgia Oral History Series: Interview with Mary Hood by Dede Yow, Thomas A. Scott and Sallie Ellison Loy (Kennesaw State University Oral History Project 1999)
Many of Hood's work has been translated into Dutch, French, Japanese and Swedish.
