Mary Hagey grew up on a dairy farm in Southern Ontario near Cambridge and Kitchener-Waterloo. A long-time resident of Montreal, she attended Concordia University, majoring in studio art with a minor in creative writing. She has worked as a personal support worker, a housepainter, a clerk in retail books, a copywriter for a mail-order house, an English composition instructor at Concordia and an art instructor at McGill's summer school for gifted children. She received her M.A. in English in 1994 while employed as a travel companion, a job that allowed her to see the world. Her work has been published in PRISM International, Matrix, Grain, The New Quarterly, Room of One's Own, Descant, and Rhubarb. Her writing has been nominated for the Journey Prize, a National Magazine Award, a Western Magazine Award, and a work of creative non-fiction was short-listed for the CBC Literary Award.