Mackey writes both prose and poetry and has published many novels and books of poetry. She reveals her writing and creative process and how each kinds of writing requires a different approach and describes her process of “creative trance” that helps her to move into her own unconscious. She takes us from Western Kentucky to the Brazilian Rainforest.

Mary Mackey is a novelist, screenwriter, and poet. She’s 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. She's the author of The Year the Horses Came (HarperSanFrancisco 1993), The Horses at the Gate (Amazon Digital Services 2011), The Fires of Spring (Amazon Digital Services 2011), The Village of Bones: Sabalah’s Tale (Earthsong Series) (Create Space Independent Publishing 2016) and Immersion (iUniverse 2013)

Interview Date: 11/27/2019  Tags: Mary Mackey, poetry, Eric Hoffer Book Award, Harvard, creative trance, automatic writing, Amapa, Richard Evans Schultes, ethnobotany, the Amazon, Jaguars, Western Kentucky, the Brazilian rain forest poems, writer’s block, publishing, Art & Creativity, Women’s Studies, writing