Author
of the best-selling 2006 novel, TIME IN A GARDEN, Mary Agria has
been praised by reviewers for her "unique voice", "excellent,
intelligent writing", "richly drawn characters" and "engaging and
compelling" storytelling.
Her work has earned five-star reviews with
major online booksellers and in the annual Writers’ Digest
Self-Published Literary Fiction book award competition. Readers say
of her work: "a must-read", "pure wisdom", "from the first paragraph
to the very last, I was hooked".
Thrilled
with the overwhelming response to her novel, TIME
IN A GARDEN—which in
summer of 2006 wound up on numerous best-seller lists, garnered four
and five-star reviews online and from book groups, and which sold out
at signings on Long Island and in Michigan—Mary Agria has responded to
requests from readers to "keep it coming" with VOX
HUMANA (and most recently IN TRANSIT).
A story about community and personal growth, VOX
also combines two of her personal passions: liturgical music and
weaving. They are worlds she knows well. Ms. Agria has performed
professionally as an organist ever since she was a teenager growing up
in Wisconsin. Though only a recent member of a Long Island weavers’
guild, she has learned to appreciate deeply the skill and artistry of
the craft and its power as a metaphor for life in human community.
Ms. Agria earned B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of
Wisconsin in literature and linguistics, then spent much of her career
as a technical writer and counselor in the field of community
development and work force issues. Among her non-fiction credits:
RURAL CONGREGATIONAL HANDBOOK: A GUIDE FOR GOOD SHEPHERDS [Abingdon], PLANTING THE SEEDS OF COMMUNITY [Center for Theology and Land] and WINNING THE RAT RACE [Wm. C. Brown]. Her syndicated column on work
force issues ran in newspapers for 20 years.
In her first "retirement" to Long Island’s North Fork, she served and
continues to serve as organist and music director at both Protestant
and Roman Catholic congregations. She has begun publishing TIME in a
Garden, a newspaper column dealing with community gardening and its
connections to spirituality.
Together with her best friend and husband, retired university
president
Dr. John Agria, Ms. Agria has traveled the globe extensively from
Europe, to China, India and the ancient civilizations of Central and
South America, tends their gardens, and enjoys quality time with
friends and family at home in Michigan and New York. She is the proud
mother of four daughters, two in Arizona and two in Michigan, as well
as five grandchildren.
Author Mary Agria has hung up her TIAG banner and
has enjoyed meeting fans of her novels at signings and readings in
libraries, country inns, nurseries and greenhouses, senior citizen
villages, as well as bookstores and at garden and book club meetings,
from Long Island, New York to Michigan. A national tour is planned for
summer 2007.
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