Acorn Experiences

Mary Donnarumma Sharnick is an award-winning novelist and Connecticut native whose impressive literary achievements make her the perfect guest author for our November retreat. A magna cum laude graduate of Fairfield University with a degree in English and master's degree recipient with distinction from Trinity College, Hartford, Mary has built an extraordinary career spanning multiple genres and accolades.

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Her novels have earned numerous prestigious awards. Orla's Canvas took First Place for fiction in the 2016 Connecticut Press Club's annual contest, Third Place in the 2016 National Federation of Press Women competition, and was a Finalist in the 2017 Kindle Awards. Painting Mercy took first place in the Connecticut Press Club's annual contest and second place in the 2019 National Federation of Press Women competition. The Contessa's Easel garnered a Connecticut Press Club Honorable Mention. Her novel Thirst is being adapted for the operatic stage as "The Thirst of Venezia," showcasing the breadth of her literary impact. Mary's latest novel, En Plein Air, took first place in the 2025 Connecticut Press Club contest and received an Honorable Mention from the National Federation of Press Women. You will find her books at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

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Mary has been awarded a scholarship from Wesleyan Writers' Conference, two Nigel Taplin Innovative Teaching grants, a fellowship from the Hartford Council for the Arts Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation, and has been a student of novelists Rachel Basch and Louis Bayard. She participated in the 2014 Yale Writers' Conference historical fiction workshop and has presented at Auburn University's Writers' Conference, the Association for Writers and Writing Programs conference in Boston, the Italian American Historical Association's conference in Toronto, annually at Mark Twain Writers' Conference in Hartford, and at the University of Connecticut's Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in Waterbury, Connecticut.

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Mary is an Associate Faculty member at Post University, Waterbury, Connecticut. She has reviewed books for the New York Journal of Books, Southern Humanities Review, America, and other journals. Excerpts of her memoir-in-progress have appeared in the American Journal of Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias, Italian Americana, and Healing Ministry, among others. Her research has taken her to Venice, Fiesole, and Naples, Italy, the Deep South, and monastic communities in Tuscany, Vermont, and Connecticut. She is currently researching an anticipated collection of short stories entitled, "Here If You Want To Find Me," and is presently drafting When Light Illumines the Bars, a novel set in 1624 and 2024 Venice’s Convertite Prison.

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Mary loves mentoring aspiring writers and combines her literary achievements with a genuine passion for nurturing emerging talent. With her husband Wayne, she leads writing students and groups on slow travel tours of Italy, a place she calls her second home.