Mara Buck
A recluse who writes, paints and rants

Mara Buck's Biography

Member Info

Currently in: Maine

Member since: Sep 2009

A naïve Maine native, I arrived at NYU eager to become a lawyer (until l met one!) so switched to Art History (all those beautiful slides!), studied anatomy and painting at the Art Students League, wrote art criticism for “The Villager” and handled foreign rights for Random House and its imprints. For two years I wrote and painted on the beach in the Yucatan and was awarded a solo exhibition at the Governor’s Palace. I trekked back to the coast of Maine where I restored a nineteenth-century firehouse, painted a series of site-specific murals, sold antiques, and continued to write. I am now the sole citizen of a self-constructed woodland retreat where I write and paint and dance naked in the moonlight the better to channel publication of my novel HIGHWAY TO OBLIVION. And nonetheless rant about moving back to the city.

Influences

Influences ---- anyone who has ever written anything and some who have not. I find reading stellae in the original cuneiform comforting. Cereal boxes must do when nothing else in print is available. More to the point: Dostoevsky, Harper Lee, Capote, Melville, Elizabeth Coatsworth, Thoreau, Edna St.Vincent Millay and T.S.Eliot, Homer, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Twain. I hesitate to mention anyone living since I would prefer that no revered author read my work and say “Oh GOD! I couldn’t have possibly influenced THAT!”

Upcoming Works

HIGHWAY TO OBLIVION, novel short-listed for the Faulkner-Wisdom Foundation Prize

Forest Secrets (working title) A Short Story Collection; including 'Mud Season' named Notable Story by Gemini Magazine, and 'Charmeuse:The Story' named a semi-finalist for Faulkner-Wisdom Prize

A Novella of Maine (title to be announced) - named semi-finalist for the Faulkner-Wisdom Prize

Interests & Hobbies

Anything that contributes to my art and writing. That includes trips to the local town dump for used doors to incorporate into my extensive art installation A YEAR IN OBLIVION. Watching the grass grow. Watching the snow fall. Occasionally throwing a stick for the dog.

Toni Morrison says, “If there is a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” So I have. HIGHWAY TO OBLIVION.”