Mary-Rose Hayes
British born Mary-Rose Hayes is the author of nine novels, most recently WHAT SHE HAD TO DO, including the TIME/LIFE bestseller AMETHYST and two political thrillers co-authored with Senator Barbara Boxer.
Her books have been translated into sixteen languages and have regularly been chosen as Doubleday Book of the Month and Literary Guild main selections. She has published short stories and articles in England and the United States , and written and optioned several screenplays including an adaptation of her own novel THE NEIGHBORS, and a project for screen legend Lana Turner. She has worked as a script editor for Thames Television, London ; as Associate Editor for Pacific News Service, San Francisco ; and as a free-lance book editor.
Mary-Rose has taught creative writing workshop at the University of California, Berkeley; Arizona State University; and at numerous writers’ conferences in the United States and internationally including twelve years with the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, California; the San Miguel Writers’ Conference in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; and the Peralta Writers’ Workshop, Tuscany, Italy, where she was co-director for five years.
She has recently completed her first non-fiction book: RUNAWAY CHILD, a Memoir: Finding a way past the lifetime effects of childhood sexual abuse through Changing The Story, which she is developing into a TED talk.
Are there particular films that have influenced your writing?
Schindler’s List. I’m not surprised this film won 12 academy awards.
For me, it reinforces the importance of well-rounded character development, since it’s truly difficult for a reader/viewer to maintain interest in the purely good and the purely evil with no shades of grey. Thus the developmental arc of Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) from self-seeking pragmatism to intense moral awakening is deeply emotionally satisfying, and in contrast Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), as concentration camp commandant and surely the worst of the worst, presents a soul so clearly doomed that perhaps one can pity him.
What’s your favorite comic strip or graphic novel?
Graphic novel: Watchmen by Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons
Watchmen is an intense experience, to be explored at your own risk, among its intermingled storylines a cabal of psychotic superheroes attempting to track down a murderer, medieval pirates, and nuclear science gone mad. The art work is gorgeous and sometimes brutally graphic (follow the perspective, in a series of diminishing panels, of a victim flung from a high-rise window).
Is there a work of art that you love. Why? Have you ever visited it in person?
Constantin Brancusi’s Bird in Space.
As a teenager, on impulse, I walked into MOMA in New York City and found this bronze sculpture, one of a series, in an upper gallery. It had huge emotional heft; I never really understood why. I’d visit it whenever I was in Manhattan and the feeling never faded. I found another version in the Peggy Guggenheim museum in Venice and actually burst into tears of happy recognition.
Vacation druthers… City or Rural destination? Why?
I have always lived in cities, either in England or the United States , so for ‘time outs’ I prefer the roads less travelled. I enjoy Mexico and South America , riding third class buses to obscure destinations. My best vacations ever have been on small boats: a felucca on the Nile from Luxor to Aswan ; a 36 ft. sailboat from Ft. Lauderdale to San Juan, Puerto Rico, an Amazon trip on a 100 year old yacht once belonging to a rubber baron and, most memorably, a voyage from southern Spain to Rio de Janeiro on a 41 ft. yawl. I love the quiet, the space, the enormous sky, and the sense that anything can happen and most likely will.
Do you have another artistic outlet in addition to your writing? Do you sew? Paint? Draw? Knit? Dance?
I like to sing with a big choir or opera chorus, and I play folk guitar though not very well. Music provides an essential balance to the quiet and solitude of writing. I’ve sung most of my life, wherever I’ve lived. My favorite performance ever: the Berlioz Requiem in St. Paul ’s Cathedral in London . Another high was a chance to sing with a country and western trio at the Horny Toad bar in a small town in Arizona .
