Mary Mackey, Ph.D. is a novelist, screenwriter, and poet. She is Professor Emeritus of English and former Writer-in-Residence at California State University, Sacramento. During her twenties she lived in the rain forests of Costa Rica. Recently she’s been traveling to Brazil incorporating her experiences in the tropical rainforests into her fiction and poetry. Her historical novels include Earthsong Series - covering the lives of the people of Neolithic Europe and Immersion (iUniverse 2013), Her books of poetry include Travelers with No Ticket Home (Marsh Hawk Press 2014), Sugar Zone, winner of the 2012 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence, Breaking The Fever (Marsh Hawk Press 2006), The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams: New and Selected Poems 1974 through 2018 (winner of Eric Hoffer Book Award 2019).

Interview Date: 11/27/2019    Tags: Mary Mackey, poetry, adventure, rain forest, army ants, jungle, rural Kentucky, regional microknowledge, ecosystem, Gees Bend quilts, Portuguese, ancestral quilts, fevered dreams, Earthsong Series of novels, Elizabeth Bishop, Art & Creativity, Women’s Studies, writing, Ecology/Nature/Environment