(Mary Josephine Lavin (10 June 1912 25 March 1996) was a noted Irish short story writer and novelist. She is regarded as a pioneering female author in the traditionally male-dominated world of Irish letters. Her subject matter often dealt explicitly with feminist issues and concerns at a time when the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church and its abuses (e.g. the Magdalene Laundries) impinged extensively on Irish society.Born in East Walpole, Massachusetts in 1912, the only child of Tom and Nora Lavin, an immigrant Irish couple, Mary attended Loreto College, a convent school in Dublin. In 1943,she published her first book,Tales from Bective Bridge, a volume of ten short stories about life in rural Ireland, was a critical success and went on to win the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. She published several novels and collections of short stories during this period. Her first novel The House in Clewe Street was serialized in the Atlantic Monthly before its publication in book form in 1945)