MARY ANN ARTRIP
Writer of dark whisperings. Of saints and sinners. And redemption.
MARY ANN ARTRIP
Writer of dark whisperings. Of saints and sinners. And redemption.
Poet, short-story writer, novelist, Mary Ann Artrip published her first poem in 1989. Since then she has read from her work on PBS and featured in national and regional publications. Being a devotee of O. Henry and Hitchcock, her writing tends toward the unexpected. Blending surprise endings with love of the mystery genre, her first novel, "Remember Me With Love" published in 1994, won the publisher's mystery/suspense Golden Book Award and after being out of print for more than a decade was re-issued in 2007. Her second book, "Moonshadows," published in 2005 was nominated for the Appalachian Writers Association's Book of the Year. In 2006 "Surrey Square" came out and was a 2007 IPPY award winner.
"I didn't start writing seriously until later in life," she says. "I wasn't ready in my tender years. But I'm terribly envious of those who could, of those who had the talent and the enormous energy good writing requires. For me personally, I had to remember the words of Solomon: 'To everything there is a season.' So I had to be patient and allow myself time to mellow, to be warmed by the sun of passing summers, to ripen slowly. The trick was to strike a fine balance between ripe and rotten. No easy thing for a writer to do."
Organizations: Lost State Writers Guild; Appalachian Author's Guild & Associates; National League of American Pen Women (in Letters); Abingdon Arts Depot Writers (ACPW); Appalachian Heritage Writers Symposium (Enhancing Pride in Appalachian Literature and Culture); Elizabethton Book Club.
Poetry