Mary Willette Hughes, married to Mark, is a musician, teacher, poet, mother of seven, grandmother of twenty-three, and now great-grandmother of ten. She has had three books of poetry published, Quilt Pieces, Flight on New Wings, and The Shadow Loom Poems. During the last fourteen years, she has worked part-time for the Saint Cloud Hospital’s Recovery Plus program for addiction and recovery as a facilitator of poetry therapy and has given numerous presentations about poetry as therapy both locally and at national venues. In 2010, the National Association of Poetry Therapy presented her with a Public Service Award for her work at Recovery Plus. She has received two monetary Individual Artist Awards for her poetry, which were granted by the Central Minnesota Arts Board, the first in 1998, and again in 2010. She also has received the Mother Benedicta Riepp Award from the Monastery of St. Benedict in 2010 for “striving to exemplify Benedictine and Gospel values” in her life.
It wasn’t until 1989, when her children were on their own, that Mary discovered the world of writing poetry. After careers as a music teacher and working as an instructor for eighteen years at the Family Life Bureau in Saint Cloud, Minnesota, a new vocation arrived. Poetry writing entered her world, bringing a new passion and zest to her life as she attended creative writing classes and worked at learning how to write, to speak, and to sing in this new voice.
Mary Willette Hughes 