About the author
Born in the small town of Hemingway, S.C., Mary Eaddy, the daughter of a teacher and social activist and business farmer, published her first poem in a small regional magazine before starting first grade. This early success inspired her love for the written word. From childhood her talent for storytelling was fostered by a local librarian and long list of excellent teachers.
Mary attended local public schools and St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church until she moved to Charlotte, N.C. to attend Queens College. While there she met leaders of the Feminist Movement, including Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem and Pat Carbine, and cultivated a cadre of professors and lifelong friends who encouraged her writing career.
At Queens College she was a Queens Scholar, a Dana Scholar and was tapped into Valkyrie, a leadership fraternity that selects six students each year with promise for the future. Mary received her Master of Arts degree in journalism and her Bachelor of Arts degree in broadcast journalism from the University of South Carolina, where she also studied poetry with James Dickey and worked in Washington on Capitol Hill for U.S. Senator J. Strom Thurmond.
Between graduation and graduate school she worked in the city newsroom of THE RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH, as a features writer for THE STATE NEWSPAPER and as a grassroots organizer for the League of Women voters on behalf of the Equal Rights Amendment.
She was an instructor in journalism two years for USC Upstate before joining the S.C. Technical Education System as assistant director of public information. A year later she became director of public information, working with public relations associates at sixteen college campuses at the State Board for Technical and Comprehensive Education.
In the mid-1980s she became director of public information and marketing for Coastal Carolina University. During a brief leave of absence she served as press secretary for U.S. Ambassador Philip Lader, then a candidate for S.C. governor.
Fascinated with politics, Mary started The Wordsmith, Inc., a boutique public relations firm specializing in public issues. She was the first accredited public relations counselor to open a full-service agency in Myrtle Beach.
The Wordsmith, Inc. represented a diverse group of clients and worked with state leaders on a variety of education and transportation issues, including the successful campaign for independence on behalf of Coastal Carolina University and the Carolina Bays Parkway Task Force, a community group that helped build a major new highway on the coast in seven years.
Mary is accredited in public relations by the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) and is a former president of the South Carolina Chapter of Public Relations Society of America (SCPRSA). The Carolinas Association of Business Communicators named Mary “Communicator of the Year” in 1982. She is the winner of numerous awards for editorial writing, speech writing and audiovisual production. She is a graduate of Leadership South Carolina. Under her leadership, The Wordsmith, Inc. earned numerous awards for excellence through professional competition.
A case study from Mary’s experience in educational public relations was one of 50 models selected nationally for a college-level textbook about public relations strategy.
Mary is committed to public service. In 1995, she was selected as a presidential delegate to the first White House Conference on Travel and Tourism. She served on Governor Carroll Campbell's State Commission on Government Restructuring; on the Horry County Mental Retardation Board; and on the Board of the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce. She is a former member of the Board of Directors for the Myrtle Beach Rotary Club and a member of the Peter Horry Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution. She served on the Board of Elders, governing board of the First Presbyterian Church of Myrtle Beach and is a former member of the University of South Carolina College of Journalism Partnership Board and Board of Directors for the S.C. Writers Workshop. She served previously on the South Carolina Education Lottery Oversight Committee and the Coastal Carolina University Humanities School Board of Visitors.
On the Board of Directors for CresCom Bank of South Carolina, Mary is also a member of the Mystery Writers of America and the Southeast Chapter of MWA.
Mary writes fiction and attends cooking schools throughout the United States. In 2001, she studied at Bread Loaf in Vermont, the oldest and most prestigious writers’ conference in America. She has served as one of several S.C. delegates to the World Assembly of the Public Relations Society.
In 2007 she joined Coastal Carolina University as special assistant to the president and served as interim vice president for university communication before joining Horry Georgetown Technical College to launch a branding initiative and handle marketing. THE OAKS OF MCCORD, a Southern mystery about a teenage girl and her feminist grandmother, was her first novel released in June 2010 by Bella Rosa Books. Her essay, "Tobacco Roads," has been recently accepted for a volume of essays called PLACES IN THE HEART released by the University of South Carolina Press in 2013. Mary was the first woman in South Carolina to be designated a Fellow by the Public Relations Society of America in 2013. In 2017, she moved to Charleston, SC, where she is writing a thriller and a book of essays about the South.
