Hey there word nerds! Today I have the pleasure of welcoming Mark Mayer to the show.
Mark is an author and has an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was a Michener-Copernicus Fellow, and holds a PhD from the University of Denver. He was also the Robert P. Dana Emerging Writer-in-Residence at Cornell College’s Center for the Literary Arts from 2012-2014.
His stories have appeared in American Short Fiction, Kenyon Review, Guernica, Colorado Review, and Mid-American Review.
Mark’s debut is a short story collection titled Aerialists, in which classic circus figures become ordinary misfits seeking grandeur in a lonely world. In this collection, Mark examines familiar tropes—like the strongman, the elephant keeper, the clowns—and reinterprets these myths by placing them in everyday contemporary life.
So listen in as Mark and I chat about this amazing book and how to gain a deeper understanding of a story by falling into its world over and over again.
In this episode Mark and I discuss:
- The intimacy of a short story.
- Creating a unique reading experience in your writing.
- How to use the theme of your book as a marketing tool the right way.
- Advice on how to approach short stories of literary fiction as a reader.
- How to use language and imagery to anchor readers in your story.
Plus, Mark’s #1 tip for writers.
About Mark Mayer
Mark Mayer is a Colorado author currently living in France with his wife and two rabbits. He has an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was a Michener-Copernicus Fellow, and holds a PhD from the University of Denver. From 2012 to 2014, Mark lived at Cornell College’s Center for the Literary Arts as the Robert P. Dana Emerging Writer-in-Residence.
His stories have appeared in American Short Fiction, Kenyon Review, Guernica, Colorado Review, and Mid-American Review.
Mark’s debut short story collection Aerialists, which takes a look at classic circus figures as ordinary misfits in the world, is now available.
To connect with mark check out his website at www.markgmayer.com.
Aerialists
Aerialists, the Michener-Copernicus winning debut from Mark Mayer, is a fiercely inventive collection of nine stories in which classic circus figures become ordinary misfits seeking grandeur in a lonely world.
The circus has always been an assortment of American exaggerations—the bold, the beautiful, the freakish, the huge. In this impressive collection, Mayer reinterprets these myths and locates them in everyday contemporary life, finding reincarnations or inversions of familiar tropes such as the strongman, the elephant keeper, and the clowns.
Under the luminous tent of Mayer’s prose, we meet an unforgettable caravan of deftly drawn characters: A heartsick teenager finds a new mentor in a tough-talking female bodybuilder. A navy recruit grapples with the impending loss of his childhood by building an exact replica of his neighborhood in code. A wilderness expert seduces his love interest with the promise of showing her an elusive mountain lion. A peach farmer, alone in a former boomtown, conducts a burial for an elephant.
Throughout, Mayer renders his characters’ attempted acts of daring and feats of strength with humor, generosity, and uncommon grace.
As Merritt Tierce, author of Love Me Back, observes, “Mark Mayer has built a circus of the normal, has somehow infiltrated the ordinary to reveal the freak inside…Cynicism and doubt and loss [are] writ so small, then deftly magnified, blown up by tenderness.”
If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!
Link to Episode 260
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