About
Mary Pacifico Curtis is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, seasoned branding and PR professional, and author of poetry and non-fiction. Published work includes her recent memoir, Understanding Moonseed, two poetry chapbooks, Between Rooms and The White Tree Quartet and numerous pickups in literary magazines and anthologies. Hawk’s Cry is her first full-length poetry collection.
Accolades include recognition as a 2012 Joy Harjo Poetry Finalist (Cutthroat Journal), 2019 Poetry Finalist in The Tiferet Journal, non-fiction finalist in The 48th New Millenium Writings contest and a 2021 non-fiction finalist in The Tupelo Quarterly Open.
At 24, she founded Pacifico, Inc., which grew into one of Silicon Valley’s largest independently owned PR and branding firms with clients that included many global technology leaders. When both daughters went to college, she earned an MFA in 2012 in creative writing from Goddard College.
Curtis lives with her husband in the foothills of the Santa Cruz mountains on a terraced property where she grows vegetables and fends off gophers while admiring deer, coyotes, wild turkeys and the occasional bobcat.
(photo by Laura Turbow Photography)
Acclaim for Between Rooms
"With a deft lyrical hand Mary Curtis metabolizes in equal measure grace and gratitude, the past and future, finding herself 'between two rooms' after the crushing loss of her husband. 'I tell you this so you can feel/ the cold under my feet, new foundation/ of loss strangely pitted and stone/ ragged with remnants of lives.' Grafted from the raw and wide corners of the heart these poems with startling grace explore the many sides of the 'wild possible,' and the message that resonates is one of reverence and joy. These poems articulate the ways death can teach us to more fully live, and what a tremendous gift."
Sara Michas Martin, former Wallace Stegner Fellow and author of Grey Matter
Acclaim for The White Tree Quartet
"Bold as it is delicate, beautiful as it is violent, The White Tree Quartet is Mary Curtis's homage to the everyday and the exotic. She shows us the distances we must often travel during the simplest of interactions, and how if we choose to look, we can find jungles in our own back yards."
J
Jon Michael Varese, author, The Spirit Photographer