Author Mary Ellen Feron will visit Dog Ears Bookstore & Café, 688 Abbott Road, Buffalo, to sign copies of her books from noon to 2 p.m. Saturday, March 8.
The author, a retired registered nurse, has been a writer since high school. She lives in Buffalo with her husband, Edward Zablocki. She has two married sons, Francis and Paul, and four grandchildren. Her writing is done on her roll-top desk surrounded by over 50 antique family photos spanning three centuries and two continents.
The idea for her work originated several years ago while Mary was still practicing nursing. She has published poetry and essays on the spirituality of work for Franciscan publications, Tau USA (1996-2000) and The Cord (1993, 1998, Franciscan Institute Publications). These efforts led to speaking engagements across the United States.
A trip to Ireland in 2004 kicked Mary’s writing into high gear and triggered an insatiable passion for the history and customs of her ancestors. In 2005, her work, Sweet Gloria, took second prize in the first annual short story contest in The Buffalo News. Prior to publishing her novels, her most recent publication was her poem Night Psalm, included in Prayers from Franciscan Hearts by Paula Pearce, S.F.O. (St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2007). Also in 2007, Mary finished a 637-page novel, A Tent for the Sun, and printed 50 copies as Christmas gifts for her family.
In December 2012, Mary split her novel into three books, calling the collection The Extraordinary Love Trilogy. She published the first of the three, under the original title A Tent For the Sun, in February 2013, followed in April by My Tears, My Only Bread and in June by White Dawn Rising.
In 2014, A Tent for the Sun was a semifinalist in the Amazon 2014 New Author Contest, receiving a very positive review by Publisher’s Weekly.
In 2023, she finished In the Shelter of Each Other, the fourth addition to the series, At that time, the original trilogy was reprinted for a tenth anniversary edition under the new heading The Extraordinary Love Series.
Her work experience with the elderly, the disabled and particularly laboring women bring life to her vividly descriptive scenes and her characters have been described by readers as Dickensian. She has many more characters to let out of her head and looks forward to giving them life as long as she can put ink to paper.
For more information on Dog Ears Bookstore, please visit dogearsbookstore.org.
