Mallary Tenore is an assistant professor of practice at The University of Texas at Austin's School of Journalism and Media and McCombs School of Business, where she teaches writing and reporting courses for undergraduate and graduate students. Mallary specializes in a variety of topics, including longform feature writing, creative nonfiction, solutions journalism and nonprofit journalism.
A longtime journalist, Mallary's articles and essays have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Dallas Morning News, The Tampa Bay Times, Harvard University’s Nieman Storyboard and more. She also maintains a weekly newsletter, Write at the Edge, where she shares writing tips and best practices.
Mallary’s debut nonfiction book, “SLIP: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery,” will be published by Simon & Schuster's Simon Element imprint and is now available for pre-order. The book blends immersive reporting, emerging science and social history around eating disorders alongside Mallary’s own harrowing journey from a childhood with anorexia to her present-day reality as a mother in recovery. While working on the book, Mallary received a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to support her reporting and writing.
Previously, Mallary was the associate director of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at UT, where she oversaw the Center's staff, programmatic work, events, fundraising, and more. Prior to that she was the executive director of Images & Voices of Hope (ivoh), a media nonprofit, where she oversaw the ins and outs of the organization and helped develop a storytelling genre called restorative narrative — stories that show how people and communities are finding meaningful pathways forward in the aftermath of tragedy.
Mallary started her career at the Poynter Institute, where she became managing editor of the institute’s world-renowned media news site, Poynter.org. In this role, she wrote, reported, and edited daily news stories about the media industry, as well as stories about best practices in newsrooms. She also taught in Poynter seminars geared toward helping journalists use social media as a reporting and writing tool. She remains an adjunct faculty member for The Poynter Institute and has led writing/reporting trainings for journalists around the world.
Mallary holds bachelor's degrees in English and Spanish from Providence College, as well as a master's of fine arts in nonfiction writing from Goucher College. She lives outside of Austin with her husband and two young children.
