Mother of four and youngest sister to five, I seem to end up writing about family most of the time. The bonds we can neither control nor break, like it or not, thread through my work. And the South. Born and raised in Atlanta, which is still part of Dixie, if only at the tattered edges, I find themes of race and religion and a preoccupation with place surface often, even when I'm sick to death of them. Then there's baseball, the game I grew up on, with a pacing and latent melancholy I can't seem to escape.
Currently, I'm shopping a novel, my second, called A GIRL OF SUMMER. Set along Florida's Gulf Coast, it features Tessa Girard, young team seamstress for a struggling indie league team in danger of losing its seaside park. It gives a girl's take on baseball, yes, but the novel's driving force is Tessa, who finds herself broke, pregnant, unwed, and underinsured on the day her baby's father takes a line drive to the head.
When I write, the chronic restlessness I feel when I do most anything else falls away.
My children fuel my creativity, as do the Smoky Mountains, and crisp spring days walking a Southern beach.
Toni Morrison Ian McEwan Ann Patchett Barbara Kingsolver Marilynne Robinson Clyde Edgerton Jeffrey Eugenides Jhumpa Lahiri Geraldine Brooks
Some Favorites: Suite Francaise, Belle Canto, Little Bee, Bird by Bird
No one has written on Martha Mattingly Payne's wall.
No one has written on Martha Mattingly Payne's wall.