Mary Bonina has published poetry, memoir, and fiction. She is the author of Living Proof, a chapbook (Cervena Barva Press, 2007). Bonina is the recipient of numerous grants and awards for her writing, and she studied with the late poets Denise Levertov and Ken Smith.

The Teacher’s Voice: A Journal for Poets and Writers in Education named her finalist for Lunch in Chinatown, poems inspired by the experience of teaching English to immigrants in their work places.
Bonina was winner of Boston Contemporary Authors competition for her poem, “Drift,” now a permanent public art installation in Boston, located outside the Orange Line Stop at Green Street Station, Jamaica Plain.
Three of her poems were included in the summer 2005 Boston City Hall exhibition 375 Views of Boston, which also featured the work of painters, photographers, and sculptors.

Her poems have appeared in many journals, including Salamander, Hanging Loose, Red Brick Review, English Journal. Her poems are also featured in three anthologies, in City River of Voices (1992), from West End Press, New Mexico, in Voices of the City, a joint venture of the Rutgers University Center for Ethnicity, Culture and the Modern Experience and Hanging Loose Press (2004), and in Vacations: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Outrider Press, Chicago, 2007). Bonina is also the author of My Father’s Eyes: a Memoir. “Going Away,” an excerpt from her memoir, received Honorable Mention in the University of New Orleans Study Abroad Contest (2009), and other excerpts from it have been published in Gulf Stream, Hanging Loose magazine’s 40th Anniversary issue, and Zingology: The Power Issue. She also writes fiction, and her story, “March,” was published in the December 2007 issue of Istanbul Literature Review.

Bonina presents workshops and talks on writing memoir in libraries and schools and gives readings. She also provides editing and tutoring services upon request.

She received a full fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center and she has been a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts since 2002, where she was in residence October – November 2009.

Bonina grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts. She holds an MFA degree in the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, where her mentors were some of the best known and appreciated American contemporary prose writers and poets. She is a member and serves on the Board of Directors of the Writers Room of Boston. She now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband, Mark Pawlak, and her son, Gianni. Her full-length collection of poems was published in October 2010, and she is currently working on a novel.