Mary Kay Blakely is a professor emeritus at the Missouri School of Journalism, located in Columbia, Missouri. Born during the “baby boom” in Chicago, she moved to Fort Wayne Indiana in the early 1970s and became a journalist almost accidentally after her two sons were born, working from home to write a weekly column for the local newspaper. It was a tumultuous time: The peace movement, civil rights movement, women’s movement and environmental movement provoked important questions from coast to coast, and she became deeply involved in changing public perceptions. Her career moved abruptly to Manhattan without her in 1981, when the New York Times asked her to write the “Hers” column and launched her byline into the national press. She eventually moved to New York to write full time for Ms. magazine, as well as Vogue, Elle, Glamour, InStyle, Life, Working Woman, Psychology Today, Self, Lear’s, Mother Jones and other publications. She taught part-time at the New School of Social Research and New York University before returning to the Midwest in 1997, becoming a full-time professor at the Missouri School of Journalism.
