Mary Gallagher is an American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, actress, director and teacher.

In 1996-97, she directed the Playwrights Workshop at the University of Iowa, and she taught playwriting and screenwriting at New York University/Tisch School of the Arts from 2001 to 2010.

She is an alumna of New Dramatists, where she developed many of her plays and created and moderated the series, "You Can Make a Life: Conversations with Playwrights" from 1994 to 2001.

[1] Her screenplays for Paramount, MGM, HBO, NBC, CBS, Lifetime, and Showtime include Nobody's Child (CBS), co-written by Ara Watson and directed by Lee Grant (Writers Guild Award, Emmy for Marlo Thomas); Bonds of Love (CBS), starring Treat Williams, Kelly McGilliss and Hal Holbrook (Best TV Movie of the Year, Banff International Television Festival); and The Passion of Ayn Rand, starring Helen Mirren, Peter Fonda and Eric Stoltz, which premiered at Sundance and aired on Showtime (Emmy for Mirren, Golden Globe for Fonda).

Gallagher was also a staff writer for Jojo's Circus, a hit stop-motion animation show on the Disney Channel.