Mary pflum peterson biography

Mary Pflum Peterson is a multi-Emmy-Award-winning television journalist, a New York Times bestselling author, and an acclaimed public speaker.
Mary Pflum Peterson is a veteran multi-Emmy-Award winning producer at Good Morning America.
Mary Pflum Peterson is multi-award winning television journalist and New York Times bestselling author.

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By THIRSTY

Mary Pflum Peterson

Mary Pflum Peterson is an Emmy Award-winning producer at ABC News/Good Morning America where she has covered a broad range of stories from natural disasters to the royal wedding to the Academy Award ceremonies. Before joining ABC, she was a producer and reporter for CNN where she handled subjects as diverse as the Middle East, the Afghanistan war and ballrooms in Vienna. Peterson grew up in Wisconsin, but lives in New York City with her husband and four young children. It was in Manhattan that Stay Thirsty Magazine had a chance to visit with her for this Conversation.

STAY THIRSTY: Your book, White Dresses, is "A Memoir of Love and Secrets, Mothers and Daughters" and has been praised as "A candid, moving memoir about the many complexities of family." You dedicated the book to your mother, Anne Diener Pflum. How did writing this book help you understand your mother and your childhood?

MARY PFLUM PETERSON: Writing White Dresses provided me with a terrific ability to take a step back and look at my childhood in full. Like

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JOURNALIST

Mary Pflum Peterson is a multi-Emmy-Award-winning television journalist. Her work has taken her to warzones in Afghanistan, royal weddings in London, papal funerals in Rome, Hurricane-Katrina-ravaged streets in New Orleans, Opera Balls in Vienna, Presidential campaign trails in middle America, and backstage at the Oscars. Pflum Peterson's work has been broadcast to millions on CNN, ABC, and NBC. Her posts have included New York, Atlanta, Berlin and Istanbul. Interviewees have included President Obama, Chelsea Clinton, Newt Gingrich, then-Pakistani-Prime-Minister-Sharif, George Clooney, Mary Tyler Moore and Jennifer Lopez. From 1996 to 2001, Pflum Peterson was an on-camera reporter for CNN, reporting for CNN Newsroom and CNN International. In 1999, Pflum Peterson moved to Turkey, where she served as CNN Turk Bureau Chief and spent more than two years living in and reporting on earthquakes, primate struggling, the rise of Hezbollah and unrest throughout the Middle East. Pflum Peterson is additionally an accomplished print journalist. Her work has been published

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Daughter unpicks a tangled family history in memoir 'White Dresses'

By Elfrieda Abbe, Special to the Journal Sentinel

March 25, 20160

A "crazy workload" as a producer for "Good Morning America," the birth of her fourth child and the responsibility of taking care of her mother's affairs after her unexpected death didn't keep Mary Pflum Peterson from enrolling in a writing class to "polish off a novel. I was pretty much on a hamster wheel," she said during a phone interview.

But instead of finishing a novel, Peterson wrote her debut nonfiction book "White Dresses: A Memoir of Love and Secrets, Mothers and Daughters" (William Morrow). The change of plan came when as a class assignment she wrote an essay about her family's tangled history.

When she was 9 years old, Peterson discovered a mysterious photo — her mother Anne in a nun's habit. What she didn't know was her mother had been a nun for almost a decade in the 1950s and left the convent after suffering abuse. She then married Peterson's father, who later came out as gay, and Peterson's parents divorced.

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