About the Author

Mary Ellen (called "Molly") Hurley Moran was born May 1, 1947, in Boston and grew up in Taunton, Massachusetts, spending summers in North Falmouth, on Cape Cod. She attended Dana Hall, a boarding school in Wellesley, Massachusetts, graduating in 1965. She received her B.A. from Brown University in 1969, with a major in English Literature.

From 1969 to 1972 Moran taught middle school in Pennsylvania and New Mexico, and then enrolled in graduate school in English at the University of New Mexico. She received her M.A. in 1975 and her Ph.D. in 1980. Since 1980 she has held teaching positions at a variety of colleges and universities, including University of Kansas, Clemson University, and University of Georgia, where she is currently Professor in the English component of the Division of Academic Enhancement.

With a scholarly background in twentieth-century British literature and with teaching experience in freshman composition, developmental writing, technical writing, and ESL writing, Moran has published a range of academic books and articles. Her two books prior to Finding Susan were Margaret Drabble: Existing within Structures (Southern Illinois University Press, 1983) and Penelope Lively (Twayne Publishers, 1993). She has published book chapters, essays in Festschrifts, and articles in a number of journals, including South Atlantic Review, Journal of Basic Writing, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Arizona English Bulletin, and Notes on Teaching English. She has also presented numerous scholarly papers and won the award for Best Article Based on a Paper Presented at the 1989 Carolinas Symposium on British Studies. In 1998 she served as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Humanities, making recommendations for fellowships in British Literature.

Moran’s scholarly interests, however, have been superseded in the past few years by an interest in issues related to the personal tragedy she suffered in the mid-1990s, when her older sister, Susan, an alleged victim of domestic violence and alcohol, disappeared and was eventually found murdered. Since that time, Moran has been making efforts to educate the public about the topics of missing persons, battered-woman syndrome, and female alcoholism. Her efforts have resulted in segments on the television shows Unsolved Mysteries, American Journal, and MSNBC Live, letters to Baltimore newspapers, an essay in the Brown Alumni Magazine, and, most recently, the completion of her book about the tragedy, published in 2003 by Southern Illinois University Press.

Moran lives in Athens, Georgia, with her husband, Mike Moran.