Mary Anna King

Mary Anna King is a memoirist and food writer based in New England.

Her debut memoir, Bastards (W.W. Norton, 2015), tells the story of how she and her six biological siblings were separated by adoption and grew up across five different families before finding their way back to one another. It was named to the New York Times Book Review‘s shortlist and reviewed in the Boston Globe, Kirkus, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and Literary Mama; she has spoken about the book and about adoption on NPR, in The Guardian, and on the Adoptees On podcast.

Before she was a writer, Mary spent more than twelve years working in fine dining, in dining rooms connected to some of the most ambitious chefs in the country. This experience anchors her writing about food, work, and hunger. Her essays and food writing have appeared in Food Republic, The Rumpus, DAME, The Toast, and elsewhere.

She is at work on new books and writes the newsletter Adapted, about food, adoption, and the recipes we inherit from the places we didn’t know we came from.

Essays & Features

• “Photographic Proof” — The Toast
• “I Broke Up With My Father” — DAME
• “The Reality of Love: Talking with Adrian Todd Zuniga” — The Rumpus
• “My Sister’s Father” — The Lost Daughters
• Selected food writing — Food Republic

Books

Bastards: A Memoir — W.W. Norton & Co., 2015

Bastards is a love story about the most absurd, primal, inescapable relationship most of us will ever have; the relationship we have with our siblings.

It is the true story of seven biological siblings who were adopted by five different families, grew up apart, and eventually found one another again.