Narratives of Home: 2014

About Cynthia-Marie Marmo O'Brien

I am a creative writer, editor, and educator. In the spirit of Walt Whitman, I take the world for my subject. In the tradition of W.G. Sebald, I endeavor to accompany my readers on journeys. In homage to Virginia Woolf, I favor the lyric in my prose style. I am inspired by James Joyce's projects to test the limits of language; I hope to make reading as multi-sensory an experience as possible. If my writing were a painting, it'd be a DeKooning sometimes and a Hopper other times. For models of literature as social protest or illumination of cultural tension, I return to Rodolfo Walsh, Ernesto Sabato, and Ama Ata Aidoo. For examinations of values at the heart of relationships, I rely on Flannery O'Connor & Marilynne Robinson. For experiments with the equation linking form and content, I turn to Eula Biss, Joan Didion, John McPhee and too many poets to list. I learned most of what I know about writing from Cynthia Huntington and Ernest Hebert, as well as my mentors in the Columbia MFA nonfiction program. My contemporary role models for the nonfiction narrative writer as public intellectual are Samantha Power and Patricia Hampl. My English syntax is influenced by Romance languages and Hungarian constructions. Life is an endless quest for the one word that says it all: please share when you find it.

I publish essay, literary criticism and journalism. For pleasure, I write fiction. For strength training, I compose poetry. To learn, I write about pedagogy and neuroplasticity based on research and my active life as an educator. For ideas that I’d like feedback about, I blog.

Connect with me on Twitter @CMMOB or my website.

Questions, differences of opinion, suggestions, or other words to share are welcome in the comment section!

Wednesday, March 26, 2014