I was raised by a violently pacifist father and a devoted self-obliterating mother to sail around Europe and wander through African war zones. They assured me and my three sisters that everything was “fine”, but to our grown up selves admitted the peril of many of our adventures.
After graduating from a Quaker co-ed boarding school with a superior working knowledge of hypocrisy and duplicity I enrolled at Circle in the Square Theatre School in New York City where I studied under David Margulies. He was wonderful but I became disenchanted with acting, which seemed intent on bringing the world into the self, rather than birthing the self out.
And my Self needed to get out.
I liked my classes at The Martha Graham School of Dance much better. I loved the silence of dance, the “yoga” of dance. I began working on a novel about prep school entitled The Speechless.
I fell into an early marriage with a “rock star” (dead these fifteen years) which lasted all of two years, during which we bought a 140 acre farm in Devil’s Elbow, upstate New York, where alone with my two dogs I wrote while my husband toured. I completed a novel Flycatcher about an inappropriate relationship between a widow and a schoolgirl on the make. My parents had a friend who was a literary agent; he signed me to a contract which I didn’t know at the time is never done. It ended badly.
On the collapse of my marriage I found myself in Washington DC where my parents had an empty sixteenth storey apartment with a gorgeous view of Rock Creek Park. I worked as an exotic dancer while establishing myself locally as a poet; my apotheosis was being invited to read my work at The Folger Shakespeare Library. (This period of my life is commemorated in my memoir Inspired Pleasure.) But I liked dancing much more than I liked poets and I found poetry readings downright creepy. Since gothic novels were the rage at the time and I wasn’t having any luck with autobiographical stuff I wrote a romantic Victorian murder mystery entitled Devlyn. This sold over 100,000 copies and is still selling; it even got pretty good reviews for a gothic.
My high school boyfriend looked me up and surprised us both by proposing to me – I astonished everyone by accepting. We bought a case of Moet Chandon and wandered up the Eastern Seaboard trying to explain it to each of our families. A cousin said: “I give it three years.” We’ve been together thirty and have two grown children.
Once I’d figured out the wifing-mothering thing (that took awhile) I sold a psychological thriller Find Courtney which garnered excellent reviews (although mediocre sales). My boutique publisher sold me and my second-book contract to another publisher where my second book moldered for two years (the term of the contract) before they sent out letters saying they’d decided not to hire editors for fiction because it just didn’t pay.
Unable to get anyone interested in Woman Into Wolf I published it myself to a very satisfactory reader response. I also published a book of short stories (Awake Till the End) and two more thrillers - I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead and Depraved Heart (which won the 2011 CT Press Club Fiction Prize.)
Good reviews, small sales, terrifying readings – business as usual. After struggling with spirituality and the Problem of Enlightenment (the secret is yoga!) I decided I was looking for something new – an evolved experience bringing the Audience into the story. I can’t think of a better way to do that than through theatre.
I started with short plays – Make Me and A Bruise A Cut A Fever and Creativity One - Death Zero (which is wordless - entirely dance.) Then I managed three full-length plays; The Honey & the Pang using only Emily Dickinson’s own words and those of her family as they squabble over her literary inheritance, meaning to demonstrate why she became a recluse: the general shockingness of Society. (“They talk of hallowed things and embarrass my Dog.”) I wrote Rough sleep about college students searching for soulmates, discovering that by slaying each other’s dragons you become all-powerful (but of course first you have to figure out what those dragons are.)
The play appeared at manhattan repertory theatre, 17 w 45th st NYC on Thurs 18 april 2019