Mary Volmer
  • Home
  • Books
    • Reliance, Illinois >
      • How I came to Write Reliance, Illinois
    • Crown of Dust >
      • How I Came to Write Crown of Dust
    • Bibliographies
  • Writing
    • Blog
  • About Mary
    • News and Interviews
    • contact
    • CV >
      • Links
  • Sketches
  • Alta Mesa Center for the Arts
    • Alta Mesa Center Reading Series
    • AMCA Writing Workshops
    • Alta Mesa Writers >
      • Teaching Philosophy

Becoming Medusa

9/28/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
0 Comments

Chekhov's Law

4/28/2018

1 Comment

 
My Performance Poem in Bullets Into Bells

Chekhov's Law
By Mary Volmer


A performance poem for three actors. 1, 2, and 3 stand in a row, each holding behind her back a small scroll filled with names of people killed by gun violence. Very little movement except in their faces and voices, and in the eventual unfurling of the scrolls. The stage is bare. Red tinged lighting or background with yellow accents to suggest police tape. Experiment with the way the lines overlap and with cadence. Experiment with stage directions. Change the set.

(1)  The gun 
(3)  in act one
(1,2) The gun in act one
(3) The gun in act one
(1,2) must go off.

(1) The shock?
(3, 2) Our surprise.
(2) The crowd gasps aloud 
(3 overlaps line above) Hear the crowd
(1) gasp aloud
(1,2,3 crescendo) when the gun in act one
(2) each word a whispered beat) Goes. Off.

(1)Then the dead too soon
(2,3 overlap) Watch the
(1) too soon dead
(1,2,3 speak in a round, last word heard: “saints,” is a hiss) become newsreel saints:
(1 stoic, newsreader face) perfect mothers,
(2 newsreader face) loving fathers;
(1 newsreader face) such promise the sons and daughters
(3 joins the line above after “promise,”) My son! (gasp) My daughter!
(2 Lets scroll fall without comment on the stage; names spill out.)
(2) And the killer?
(3) The killer, crazy, yes. (Lets the scroll fall)

(1 quiet, subdued, puzzled)  Still, we never expect (Lets scroll fall)
(2 overlap expect) still never
(1,2,3) we never expect
(3) on this stage
(1,3) we set
(2) that the gun in act one will go off.


(Gunshot on “off,” stage lights out, actors cast their scrolls into the audience. If there is a projector, the names scroll down a lit screen).


https://bulletsintobells.com/2018/04/24/chekhovs-law/
1 Comment

Serious Play:The Craft of Fiction and the Importance of Storytelling

4/12/2018

0 Comments

 
Authors Sarah Ladipo Manyika and Nayomi Munaweera in conversation with Mary Volmer about the craft of fiction and the global importance of storytelling

Saturday, April 21st, 3:00 pm
Hagerty Lounge, De La Salle Hall
Saint Mary’s College, 1928 Saint Mary’s Road, Moraga, CA 94575


The Women’s National Book Association, San Francisco Chapter, presents an afternoon conversation with internationally acclaimed authors Sarah Ladipo Manyika and Nayomi Munaweera. Come to hear these two remarkable women discuss the craft of fiction, the global importance of storytelling, and their impressive philanthropic endeavors. Reception to follow.

Sponsored by the Saint Mary’s College of California MFA in Creative Writing. Co-sponsored by the Saint Mary’s English Department, the Intercultural Center, and the Women’s Resource Center.

$15.00 WNBA members, $20.00 non-members (Prepay online, or at the door)
FREE for SMC students with a valid student ID
All proceeds benefit the WNBA-SF and the Saint Mary’s College MFA’s Hedgebrook Scholarship.

To sign up: 
http://wnba-sfchapter.org/serious-play-craft-fiction-storytelling/


0 Comments

My Not Quite Banned Book

2/5/2018

0 Comments

 

In 2010 my first novel, Crown of Dust, was among several books under consideration for a county reads program. It was dismissed after a small, vocal group of parents decided the content inappropriate. Had they read the book? Well, no. But they’d heard it was set in brothel, and the tagline provided by my publisher – “A gender bending story of love, friendship and redemption” – no doubt put them off.

It is true that the main character of the book is young woman who disguises herself as a man.  And money is exchanged for sex. But if you’re hoping for a bodice buster, you’re out of luck. Crown of Dust is a coming of age story about identity, redemption, betrayal, and friendship. It features strong women surviving as best they can in a ramshackle settlement of men. Sexuality is part of the story, but not the story. (And really, if those parents wanted to strip the county of sexual references they might have started by repainting the walls of the high school girls locker room.)

Set in California during the Gold Rush, my novel dramatizes the ways in which people on the western frontier established their own conventions of behavior suitable to their circumstances. It reveals that human love has never been restricted by gender and that, for better or worse, sex has always been a commodity, a source of female power and vulnerability. I write about these things because they are true, and not even particularly revelatory. I honor the presence and stories of strong women, gay men, and black men in a place and time from which they had been excised. There are a great many more stories yet to tell. 
​

History is messy and more complex (and entertaining) than the tidy textbook myths we create to contain it. Crown of Dust revels in the mess and complexity, and for that reason suffered a fate far more common than a ban: quiet dismissal by a small minority of people who prefer their history sterilized, processed and vetted to resemble their own biases.

First appeared in Diana Tierney's Creating Herstory : Celebrating Women Who Create History


0 Comments

24th Festival of Women Authors - February 3rd

1/8/2018

1 Comment

 
Picture
Join Faith Adiele, Dr. Arlie Russell Hochschild, Shanthi Sekaran, and I at the Festival of Women Authors! Tickets are going fast. Hope to see you there!

Faith Adiele
Faith is the author of two memoirs, The Nigerian Nordic Girl’s Guide to Lady Problems, an audio and e-book about black women and fibroids, and Meeting Faith, an account of becoming the first Black Buddhist nun of Thailand, which won a PEN Open Book Award. She is writer/narrator/subject of the PBS documentary, My Journey Home, about being raised by a Nordic-American single mother and finding her Nigerian father and siblings as an adult, and co-editor of Coming of Age Around the World: A Multicultural Anthology. Her essays on multiracial identity, family, food, travel, spirituality and the writing craft have appeared in such publications as O: The Oprah Magazine, The Huffington Post, Yes!, Essence Magazine, and numerous anthologies. Named as one of Marie Claire Magazine’s “Five Women to Learn From,” Adiele is Associate Professor in Creative Nonfiction at California College of the Arts, and teaches popular workshops at Esalen, Vortex/Hedgebrook, The San Francisco Writers’ Grotto and VONA/Voices, where she founded the nation’s first travel writing workshop for people of color. She lives in Oakland, where she runs a community African Book Club. www.adiele.com, @meetingfaith.

 Dr. Arlie Russell Hochschild
Dr. Russell Hochschild is one of the most influential sociologists of her generation. Her latest book, Strangers in Their Own Land, was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the National Book Award. She is the author of several books, including The Second Shift, The Time Bind, The Managed Heart, and The Outsourced Self. Her work appears in sixteen languages. The winner of the Ulysses Medal as well as Guggenheim and Mellon grants, she lives in Berkeley, California. 

Shanthi Sekaran
Shanthi Sekaran is the author of Lucky Boy and The Prayer Room. She teaches creative writing and is a member of the Portuguese Artists’ Colony and the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Best New American Voices and Canteen, and online at Zyzzyva and Mutha Magazine. A California native, she lives in Berkeley with her husband and two children.

Mary Volmer
Mary Volmer is the author of two novels: Crown of Dust (Soho Press, 2010) and Reliance, Illinois (Soho Press, 2016). Her short fiction and essays have appeared in various publications, including Mutha Magazine, Women’s Basketball Magazine, Fiction Writers Review, Historical Novel Society Review, Brevity, and Ploughshares. She has been awarded residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and Hedgebrook and was the spring 2015 Distinguished Visiting Writer in Residence at Saint Mary’s College (CA) where she now teaches. www.maryvolmer.com
 



1 Comment

So, You Want To Write A Novel?  A Master Class

12/31/2017

0 Comments

 

So, You Want To Write A Novel?
 
Lakeshore Writers Workshops - Oakland, CA
Master Class with novelist Mary Volmer  
Author of Crown of Dust and Reliance, Illinois
January 14, 2018 – 9:00- 2:30
 
Are you working on a novel but lost traction?  Do you have a first draft but are not sure what's next?  Having trouble knowing where to begin?
 
In this one day intensive workshop, you will learn how to clarify your artistic intent and to refine (and in some cases define) the unique dramatic structure of your story. You will learn how to manage and incorporate research, historical and otherwise. You will leave with a clearer notion of how to attack the writing and/or revision process.
 
Come prepared to work! Bring a notebook and something to write with. If you have a draft, bring it along.
 
Contact workshop director Teresa Burn Gunther for cost and details: teresa@lakeshorewriters.net
https://www.lakeshorewriters.net/previous-master-classes

0 Comments

Writing as Laborious Play

10/14/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
  In "Writing as Laborious  Play," I explore the traits  athletes and writers share in common. Here's a taste:

The obsessions of writers and athletes begin the same way, as play.  In his memoir, Hoop Roots, John Edgar Wideman explains that his basketball obsession began, “as messing around…throw a ball through a hoop, a fun silly kind of trick at first, until you decide you want to do it better.” He might as well have been speaking about storytelling and writing.

Click here to read the rest in Brevity.



0 Comments

Review of LIVING IN THE WEATHER OF THE WORLD by Richard Bausch

7/15/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
“Instead of a loose web spread over a surface of a life,” says Edith Wharton, the short story is, “at its best, a shaft driven straight into the heart of human experience.” Few living writers are more adept at capturing those experiences than Richard Bausch...

Read the rest of my review of Richard Bausch's LIVING IN THE WEATHER OF THE WORLD in Ploughshares.

0 Comments

History's Lost Voices: Olympia Brown

6/30/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
  
“Reformers are often deceived by a kind of mirage. They suppose victory at hand when, in reality, generations are yet to pass before it can be realized.”

Reverend Olympia Brown, Acquaintances, Old And New Among Reformers (1911).

 
Olympia Brown, (1835-1926) was the first female pastor of the Unitarian Universalist Church. Although she does not make an appearance in Reliance, Illinois, her ideas and insights are threaded throughout. Reading her work, alongside biographies of her life, gave me a deep respect and a greater understanding of the hardships faced by professional women and women reformers in the nineteenth century. It also gave me a broader perspective on the ongoing struggles for justice and equality that reformers of all races and genders to face today. Laws are easier to change, she reminds us, than ingrained biases and convenient assumptions. And any right won, if taken for granted, can be stripped away.

 
Here’s a short summary of Brown’s life in ministry, to whet your interest. To learn more about this remarkable woman, I recommend, Olympia Brown: The Battle for Equality by Charlotte Cote.


0 Comments

Reliance, Illinois - Paperback Release!

4/11/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture

​Reliance, Illinois is out in  paperback! I celebrated at my desk this morning, surrounded by notes and early drafts of the next book, then ventured into the village  this afternoon for a treat and a fancy coffee. 

Miss Rose, one of the book's formidable female characters, would have planned a grand event to commemorate the day. She would have worn her most ostentatious hat, and sang the novel's virtues to the world (exaggerating some, I'm sure).

Feel free to click here, or here, if you want to know what other people have said about the book. I'd prefer to stand to the side, and let the story speak for itself. D.H. Lawrence said, "Never trust the teller, trust the tale." I give you the tale - Reliance, Illinois - new in paperback.  













0 Comments
<<Previous
Forward>>

    Archives

    September 2022
    March 2022
    August 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    August 2019
    March 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    April 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    September 2015
    February 2015
    July 2014
    December 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    April 2012
    November 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010

    Categories

    All
    Appearances
    Beck Toons
    Books
    Casserole!!
    Creativity
    Crown Of Dust
    D.H. Laurence
    Distraction
    Fiction
    Gold Country
    Herstory
    Highway 49
    Historical Societies
    History
    History's Lost Voices
    Home
    Illinois
    Inspiration
    Lectures
    Marilynne Robinson
    Novel Writing
    Olympia Brown
    Origins
    Painting
    Paperback
    Reading Notes
    Readings
    Reliance
    Reviews
    Sierra Writers Conference
    Teaching
    Travel
    Trust The Tale
    Unitarian
    Why Write?
    Writing

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • Books
    • Reliance, Illinois >
      • How I came to Write Reliance, Illinois
    • Crown of Dust >
      • How I Came to Write Crown of Dust
    • Bibliographies
  • Writing
    • Blog
  • About Mary
    • News and Interviews
    • contact
    • CV >
      • Links
  • Sketches
  • Alta Mesa Center for the Arts
    • Alta Mesa Center Reading Series
    • AMCA Writing Workshops
    • Alta Mesa Writers >
      • Teaching Philosophy