Mary Claire Kendall is a Washington-based writer and producer.

She is the author of several books including a new and improved edition of, Oasis: Conversion Stories of Hollywood Legends, published in February 2024. It was also published in Spain under the title También Dios pasa por Hollywood in 2016. The second in her series featuring Hollywood legends, Oasis of Faith: The Souls Behind the Billboard – Barrymore, Cagney, Tracy, Stewart, Guinness & Lemmon, was published in July 2024. Her book about Ernest Hemingway, Hemingway's Faith, was published by Rowman & Littlefield, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Christmas, 2024. Among other literary properties in development, she has written the never-before-told story of Betty Hutton’s life.

In between her own writing, she edited Holy Hour with Mother Angelica (2021), A Crisis in Culture by Fr. George W. Rutler (2020), and transformed William ‘Bill’ Walton: A Charmed Life (2013) about a Kennedy confidante who changed the face of Washington.

Mary Claire is a seasoned commentary and feature writer, television and radio personality and public speaker. She writes a regular bi-monthly column for Aleteia.

A graduate of Wellesley College, Mary Claire served as a political appointee in the Administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, at the Departments of Education (1987-’88) and Health and Human Services (1989-’93) respectively, as a speechwriter, policy analyst, and representative spearheading various initiatives.

In 1993, as she worked to establish herself as an author, she began focusing on film. In 1995, a media pro asked her out of the blue, “Have you ever considered writing fiction?” By the fall of 1997, she had written a spec script for an ABC TV show, and was asked to sign a release. After the show was cancelled, turning lemons into lemonade, she used the script as the basis for her first screenplay, The Rose and the Thorns, which she began writing on weekends at the desk of her then boss, Paul Lee, who had recently arrived in the states to helm BBC America and would go on to helm ABC Entertainment.