Welcome to Writers4Higher
This issue, Writers4Higher features
Mary Lois Timbes
Hi, Mary Lois. Welcome to the Writers4Higher family.
I was raised in Fairhope, Alabama, a
utopian community based on the economic theories of Henry George. Fairhope was
a different world then, populated by eccentrics, intellectuals and gadflies. I
accepted this as the norm but have wrestled with it all my life since Fairhope
evolved into a tourist town and the rest of the world changed all around it.
I
spent most of my adult life in New York City as a journalist and public
relations professional.When I married my third husband, who had been named
Director of Public Affairs and Advertising of Du Pont in Europe, I spent six
ecstatic years in Geneva and returned to the States a different person. The
years in Geneva I set up an amateur theatre company and I persuaded my husband
to retire to Fairhope where I started another theatre—this one allied with
Actors Equity Assn. and using professional actors among the amateurs.
Alcohol
got my husband, but I joined Al-Anon and AA and changed my life in another way
during this period. Fairhope, the theatre, and the 12-Step programs merged in
my life to inspire me to write.
2. Where do you see your writing taking you in the future?
Where this will take me in the future depends on the success of my writing. I started off with non-fiction about Fairhope, which is comfortable territory for me. My first two books were conceived as Lake Wobegone Days revisited, but were seen by publishers as local books about a popular Alabama resort and limited in reach. After a while I needed to try my hand at fiction, and That Was Tomorrow was born, somehow still stuck in Fairhope—but this time in its heyday in the 1920s as a bohemian community. At this point I just write to write, and I can’t remember a time when I didn’t.
3. How do you use your talents/time to help others?
I’m afraid I don’t do much to help others, except perhaps by example. I can’t tell you how many times throughout my life I’ve been told “You changed my life,” and that always thrills me, but I can’t say exactly what it means. Apparently some of the things I say or write stick with people and they see me totally change my own life, and they do so themselves in some small way.
In creating two theatre companies I changed my own life and influenced many others—some in the amateur theatre in Geneva had never been in a play before and many were totally unfamiliar with the wealth of insight, humor and inspiration in American plays. We concentrated on feel-good plays and the sense of community created elevated us all, including our audiences. Later I was able to use that experience to produce plays on a professional level in South Alabama and to a degree the same thing happened. The theatre has a unique way of touching the human spirit. I am proud of the contribution I’ve made in sharing that with wonderful people around the world.
Would you like to find Mary Lois?
Visit this talented author's website and blogs.
Here are links:
Mary Lois Timbes' Books:
The Fair Hope of Heaven
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That was Tomorrow
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Thank you, Mary Lois. You certainly make me want to visit Fairhope!
Be sure to visit the Writers4Higher Market! Gear for the writer in you!
Rhett DeVane
Writers4Higher
Fiction with a Southern Twist
Mary Lois, you are an example of a writer who brings unique life experience to the job. I can see how you might never depart from Fairhope and yet live a full life as a writer.
ReplyDeleteAdrian