Mary Veronica Gauthier ( ; born March 11, 1962) is a Grammy-nominated American folk singer-songwriter and author, whose songs have been covered by performers including Tim McGraw, Blake Shelton, Kathy Mattea, Boy George and Jimmy Buffett. She has won multiple awards, including at the International Folk Music Awards, the Independent Music Awards, and from the Americana Association. Mary's songs often deal with marginalization, informed by her experience of addiction and recovery, and growing up gay, and demonstrate an "ability to transform her own trauma into a purposeful and communal narrative". Her 2018 album Rifles & Rosary Beads, co-written with military veterans and their families, has been hailed as a landmark achievement. Life and career Early life, addiction and sobriety Gauthier was born in 1962 in New Orleans, Louisiana, to a mother who gave her to St Vincent's Women and Infants Asylum, where she spent the first year of her life. In adulthood, Mary spoke to her biological mother once by phone, but there was no further contact between them. She was adopted by an Italian Catholic couple from Thibodaux, Louisiana. Her father was an alcoholic. Struggling with a variety of issues, Gauthier abused drugs and alcohol, as did her brother, who was three years younger and also adopted. He was later jailed for armed robbery. Mary says she had drunk herself unconscious on sloe gin by the time she was twelve. When she was fifteen she ran away from home, recalling that "I was a gay kid, and back then, that just didn’t fly. Back then, gay kids were taking their own lives. It was horrible, and I just wanted to get away.” Mary spent the next several years in drug rehabilitation, halfway houses, and living with friends; she spent her eighteenth birthday in a jail cell. These experiences provided fodder for her songwriting later on. Spurred on by friends, she enrolled at Louisiana State University as a philosophy major, dropping out during her senior year. After attending the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts, and working in an upmarket restaurant, she got financial backing to open a Cajun restaurant in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood, calling it Dixie Kitchen. On opening night, 12 July 1990, she was arrested for drunk driving and has been sober ever since. "I eventually got sober when I was twenty seven years old... I started writing songs in earnest at around thirty two years of age",