2011 Issue - Santa Fe Community College

Meg: Your writing has a rhythmic beauty and depth to it – poetic
prose – that has captivated readers since your first book. You are loved by
both poets and fiction writers, as well as all your non-writing readers out
there. How did it change for you to write a biography To move from fiction
to another genre
Melissa: I found it incredibly difficult. I had to stick to the barbedwire
fences of facts, had to write in a "lowered" style and with a kind of
language that would reach as broad an audience as possible. It drove me
crazy. I was inspired by the woman I was writing about, but left dispirited
by the process of writing in what I thought of as neutral, gray prose. I
told myself it was a service project...a commissioned biography of Arizona
philanthropist Virginia Galvin Piper, a kind of philanthropist's coffee
table book. I interviewed over 100 people in Arizona and Chicago,
many of them wealthy philanthropists themselves, and in meeting them,
overcame an innate, wrong bias I had unconsciously harbored against
wealthy people. I chose the photographs appearing in the book, happily
sifting through hundreds of marvelous old black and white photos, the
images revealing so much more, I thought, than my too-pleasantly cadenced
words. It turned out well, the biography, but afterwards, I ran like
I was on fire back into the sweet anarchy of fiction.
Meg: Juggling your many balls-in-the-air as writer, teacher, reader,
traveler, promoter and soulful humanitarian, how do you keep a steady
writing schedule
Melissa: I don't. I struggle with that balance all of the time. I love
traveling to meet courageous people doing amazing humanitarian work
in the world, Ecuador, India, Afghanistan – I am trying to figure out, by
meeting these people, what inspires some individuals to say yes to a
larger life, a life of service and risk...and why are they so much happier,
more joyful than the rest of us Or are they As for my writing, I do write
more in the summer, when I am not teaching. There have been long,
good stretches during a semester when I've managed to wake up early
and write for a couple of hours each day. But it's a perennial battle for
me, a battle for priorities and time. I am happier when I write, I know
Santa Fe Literary Review 73