Mary Lythgoe Bradford: Mormon Author

Mary Lythgoe Bradford is a writer, poet, and editor. She was born on October 24, 1930, in Salt Lake City, Utah, and earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Utah.

She was an English instructor at the University of Utah and at Brigham Young University. She served as a consultant and teacher in writing and speech for various government agencies in Washington and taught writing briefly at American University in Washington.

Bradford was the editor of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought from 1977 to 1983. She authored Leaving Home: Personal Essays, which won the 1998 Association for Mormon Letters personal essay award. She edited a collection of essays titled Mormon Women Speak and wrote the biography Lowell L. Bennion: Teacher, Counselor, Humanitarian, for which she was awarded the 1995 Best Biography Award from the Mormon History Association and the Evans Biography Award for best biography.

Bradford and her husband Charles Harry Bradford, who died in 1991, are the parents of three children. She is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.