Mary Pipher graduated in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1969 and received her Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska in Clinical Psychology in 1977. She was a Rockefeller Scholar in Residence at Bellagio and has received two American Psychological Association Presidential Citations, one of which she returned to protest psychologists’ involvement in enhanced interrogations at Guantánamo and other black sites.

Mary was born in the Ozarks and grew up in rural Nebraska. As a girl she liked reading, writing, swimming, being outdoors, and talking to her friends and family. She still enjoys these activities. She is also a community organizer and activist for many causes. She lives in Nebraska with her husband Jim.

Pipher is the author of 10 books, including her #1 New York Times bestseller REVIVING OPHELIA, and her most recent, WOMEN ROWING NORTH: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age.

Books by Mary Pipher

A Life in Light: Meditations on Impermanence

by Mary Pipher - Essays, Memoir, Nonfiction

In her luminous new memoir in essays, Mary Pipher --- as she did in her New York Times bestseller WOMEN ROWING NORTH --- taps into a cultural moment, to offer wisdom, hope and insight into loss and change. Drawing from her own experiences and expertise as a psychologist specializing in women, trauma and the effect of our culture on our mental health, she looks inward in A LIFE IN LIGHT to what shaped her as a woman, one who has experienced darkness throughout her life but was always drawn to the light. Her plainspoken depictions of her hard childhood and life's difficulties are dappled with moments of joy and revelation, tragedies and ordinary miseries, glimmers and shadow.