Biographical Note

Born in 1935 in Sligo, Ireland, Mary O'Hara began singing at an early age and first learned to play the harp from Máirín Ní Shéa for a school pageant. She won her first singing competition at the age of eight and appeared on her first broadcast on Radio Éireann at the age of sixteen. In 1955, she rose to greater fame when she performed at the Edinburgh International Festival of the Arts and was featured on the cover of Irish Digest. Also that year, poet Thomas Kinsella introduced her to the American poet Richard Selig, whom she married in 1956. Fifteen months later, Selig died of Hodgkin's disease. O'Hara continued to perform for four years, releasing three albums. In 1962, O'Hara entered Stanbrook Abbey, where she remained as a nun for twelve years. In 1974, she returned to her musical career and garnered much international acclaim until her retirement in 1994. During this second span as a performing artist, O'Hara released eighteen albums, hosted a series of radio and television programs, and wrote several books. In 1985, she married Dr. Padraig O'Toole. Following her retirement, she and O'Toole lived in Africa for six years where they both worked with children with AIDS in Dar es Salaam and street children in Nairobi. In 2005, O'Hara began giving a series of talks entitled Travels With My Harp, which resulted in five published volumes of harp music, accompanying CDs, and a revised and updated autobiography. In 2007, Harp on the Willow, a musical play about O'Hara's life, premiered with much success in Australia.

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