Mary L. Hoefler is a Chicago-based writer and comedic storyteller whose work blends humor, emotional intelligence, and fearless self-examination. Her stories explore ambition, family, silence, and the moments when “being fine” stops working.

She has told well over a dozen stories on The Moth stage, earning multiple StorySlam wins and two Grand Slam victories, and performs regularly across Chicago. Informed by decades of therapy—giving and receiving—and by her upbringing as the daughter of immigrants who treated silence as a survival skill, her work examines what happens when insight arrives without instructions.