Mary Catherine D’Amore is a writer and illustrator whose work bridges art, folklore, and literary adaptation. Her debut novel, Sourland Farm, is a literary analogue of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights on the Sourland Mountain of New Jersey, exploring love, revenge, and inheritance within a modern gothic landscape. Set between 1969 and 2002, the novel unites Brontë’s psychological depth with the history and folklore of rural America.
Before turning to fiction full-time, D’Amore spent more than three decades in education: an early childhood education project, Toddler Town; a New Jersey public school consortium, the Piaget Math Project and editor of its publication, “The Constructive Teacher;” and technology coordinator and computer teacher at an independent school in Princeton, NJ, authoring annual technology plans, developing computer science curricula, writing documentation for all aspects of data management, and was contributing editor of the course newsletter, “Friendly User.”
An artist and storyteller, D’Amore has written and illustrated seventeen children’s books drawing on folklore and historical legend, including Sir James Tyrrell and the Horndon Worm; Baron Hugo Gifford, Wizard of Goblin Hall; The Colstoun Pear; and others. Her creative work reflects a lifelong fascination with how history, myth, and place shape the stories we tell.
She lives on the Sourland Mountain in New Jersey, where she continues to write, paint, and research local history for future projects.