Mary E. Styslinger is a professor of English and literacy education at the University of South Carolina where she directed the Midlands Writing Project, a site of the National Writing Project, from 2001-2018. She has served as the secondary program coordinator and currently advises students pursuing MT and Ph.D. degrees in secondary English and Literacy education. She taught high school English and theatre in Ohio for 12 years and currently teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in English and literacy methods. She is a past president of the South Carolina Council of Teachers of English and currently co-edits South Carolina English Teacher. Her interests include: interweaving literacy into the English curriculum, serving marginalized and at-risk youth, and workshopping content and pedagogy for democracy and justice.

Mary is the author of Workshopping the Canon and co-editor of Literacy Behind Bars: Successful Reading and Writing Strategies for Use with Incarcerated Youth and Adults. She has published articles in English Journal, Voices from the Middle, Language Arts, Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, English Teaching: Practice and Critique, and Kappan and received grants to fund her research and professional development with teachers from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation, South Carolina Reading Initiative, and the National Writing Project. She is currently writing a sequel to Workshopping the Canon.