About Maureen

Maureen Ellen O’Leary is a writer in northern California. Her poems have appeared in Blue Arc West: An Anthology of California Poets, California Quarterly, and A Walk with Nature: Poetic Encounters that Nourish the Soul. Her essays, some award-winning, have appeared in numerous local, national, and international publications, including Financial Times, Hemispheres Magazine, The East Bay Monthly, San Francisco Chronicle and The Chronicle Review.

In addition to her published work, she has written a mystery, The Promised End, a memoir, Small Beginnings, and three in a series of children’s books starring her cats, Pip and Petite. She is currently engaged in writing a lively history of her adolescent/teen babysitting experiences; the working title is Babysitting: Tales of Horror (Sort of).

Although she enjoys writing in all genres, Maureen finds her greatest pleasure in writing creative non-fiction. By exploring and documenting in prose her memories and reflections, she hopes to encourage readers to explore their own. Using writing to revisit in imagination our past and to investigate our present inevitably enriches our lives.

An east coast (Boston) transplant, Maureen earned her Ph.D. in English at Berkeley and was a tenured professor at Diablo Valley College for more than twenty-five years before retiring in 2018. She lives in Oakland, California with her husband. She can be contacted at
maur.oleary@gmail.com.