WoodSprite Cabin started life as a small sheep barn where the farm’s previous owners housed new mamas and their lambs. Since we have no sheep, it said it would like to be a writing cabin. I agreed.
Overly Dramatic 9-year old.
1971 - First Art Show Award, Lawrence Twp. (Pregnant with my first-born.)
Painting the house 2021
Mary D'Amore is an American writer and artist who lives on Sourland Mountain in New Jersey with her husband, son, and daughter. She has a passion for rural life and animals and has written and illustrated seventeen children's books, each inspired by a blend of lived experience, family stories, legend, and imagination.
Drawing on decades of work in education and the arts, along with her deep ties to the Sourland region, Mary brings a distinctive voice to her storytelling and a strong sense of place to every book she creates. Through her writing, and in her creative hub, WoodSprite Cabin, she shares stories that speak both to lovers of classic literature and to readers fascinated by the folklore, history, and wild landscapes of New Jersey.
Her philosophy is to not “talk down” to children. A child asking a grownup, “What does that mean?” is not just a gap in comprehension; it is a transfer of curiosity from the book's page into the real world. The difficulty in assigning an age range to Mary’s books comes from this philosophy. She is not writing simpler books; she is writing accessible books with depth underneath. Allowing a child to encounter something slightly beyond their current experience invites children into the conversation.
Mary is also a cook and self-described "creative space designer" who has transformed the outbuildings on her small farmstead into a painter's studio, a textile studio, and a writer's cabin. Her greatest joy is creating happy memories for family and friends.
Her debut adult novel Sourland Farm is a literary analogue of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.
Sourland Farm “translates” Emily Brontë’s exploration of obsession, family, trauma, and forgiveness into a twentieth-century American Gothic landscape.
© 2026 Mary D’Amore, All Rights Reserved