Mary Enda Hughes was born Cecilia June Hughes March 30, 1923 at Fall River, Massachusetts to Arthur and Loretta (Ford) Hughes, and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She entered the School Sisters of Notre Dame (SSND) in August 1940, took her first vows in August 1943, and was given the religious name Mary Enda. Hughes taught at Catholic schools in Baltimore, New York City, and Charleston from 1943 to 1944 and from 1961 to 1975, and was a librarian and English teacher from 1966 to 1975. Her bachelor’s degree in education is from St. John’s University, New York (1958), and her Master of Arts degree is from Boston College (1970).

Hughes regularly published poetry in the Catholic Press and literary publications starting in the 1970s. The National Catholic Press Association awarded her First Place in Poetry in 1977 for a collection of her poems published in The Catholic New World. She was poet in residence at the College of St. Joseph in Vermont in 1976, and was a writer in the adult religious education division of Paulist Press until 1980. From 1982 to 1988 she taught English, creative writing, and poetry at Boston College. While teaching, she was also a freelance editor, book critic, consultant, and lecturer on creative writing. In 1988 she left Boston for community service and volunteer ministry in Baltimore, Maryland convents. She continued to write after her retirement, and published a book of poetry, What the Poem Did, in 2010. She died on November 8, 2011 at the age of 88.

Sources:

Baltimore Sun, “Sister Mary Enda Hughes.” Baltimore Sun, November 13, 2011.

Hughes, Mary Enda, S.S.N.D. about the author to What the Poem Did. Baltimore, MD: United Book Press, 2010.

School Sisters of Notre Dame. “Sister Mary Enda Hughes.” School Sisters of Notre Dame: Atlantic-Midwest Province. https://atlanticmidwest.org/posts/sister-mary-enda-hughes.