Mary Angeles Armstrong

Writer & Journalist

Mary grew up in Southern California, surrounded by ocean and mountains, the daughter of Australian parents who always intended to return home.  She spent her childhood reading and exploring outdoors, taking for granted the abundant natural resources around her to hike through, swim in, climb, and even eat.  She developed a deep love and respect for the natural world.  Those early experiences planted the seeds of environmental awareness that continue to inform her writing today. 

She received an undergraduate degree in literature and writing from UC Santa Barbara while living in a friend’s tool shed.  After teaching in California and living in Australia, she moved to New York City to pursue an MFA in writing at the City College of New York where she also taught composition, literature and poetry as an adjunct at Bronx Community College. She’s been awarded multiple artist residencies, including two stints at the Hedgebrook Writer’s Colony, and received a NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship. In 2005 she first attended the Byrdcliffe Artist in Residency program in Woodstock, which led to a decade of living in various Swiss-chalet style cabins at the colony.  In 2008, she transitioned to full-time upstate living to raise her son.

Mary’s writing explores personal narrative, architecture, environmental context, and connection, as well as the stories embedded in area homes.  Her shelter journalism explores the idea of homes as more than just physical spaces—they are reflections of the people who inhabit them, shaped by design, interspecies connection, the seasons, place, and memory.  Her background living in a variety of homes and on multiple continents has enriched her perspective as a writer exploring the emotional and personal connections people have with the spaces they inhabit. 

Mary has been Chronogram’s home editor since 2015. Her monthly column explores regional living through the lens of creative shelter.  She’s profiled creatives, chefs, tech entrepreneurs, collectors, small business owners, gardeners, self-described hippies, every kind of family, sailors and even an ex-con; explored almost every type of property imaginable—luxury homes to historic sites to communal living arrangements—and regularly draws from a diverse network of professionals who share insight on local history, culture, real estate trends, design, and the cutting edge of sustainability.  

Her in-depth architecture and interior design profiles regularly feature in Upstate House and her features connecting macro real estate trends with local markets and design in Mansion Global.