Marian O’Shea Wernicke

Born and raised in an Irish Catholic family in St. Louis, Missouri, Marian O’Shea Wernicke is the eldest of seven children. She was a nun for eleven years and spent three years working in Lima, Peru, during that time. She is a former professor of English and creative writing at Pensacola State College and the author of a memoir about her father called Tom O’Shea: A Twentieth Century Man. She also coedited and contributed to an award-winning book of short fiction and memoir called Confessions: Fact or Fiction? Marian is married to Michael Wernicke, and they are the parents of three adult children. After many years in Pensacola, Florida, they now live in Austin, Texas.

Do you speak a second language? Do you think differently in the language? Does it influence your writing? 

I speak Spanish fluently due to having lived and worked in Peru and Spain for over four years.  I studied Spanish both at St. Louis University and for five months at the Maryknoll priests’ Instituto de Idiomas in Cochabamba, Bolivia. I read Latin American fiction and poetry in Spanish, and since my husband’s mother was from Puerto Rico, he and I spoke Spanish at times when we didn’t want our children to understand what we were saying!  I find Spanish a very musical language with a wonderful effect especially in poetry and songs.  My novel Toward That Which is Beautiful is set in Peru and Bolivia, so I use quite a few Spanish phrases and words to give the flavor of the place because much of the time the characters would be speaking in Spanish. In the dialogue when the central character, Kate, is speaking, I try to convey the halting diction that she would have used, given her newly acquired Spanish.    

Are there particular films that have influenced your writing? 

I love films, especially foreign films such as the work of Pedro Almodovar, the Argentinian film The Secret In Their Eyes, French films based on the novels of Marcel Pagnol, such as My Father’s Glory, My Mother’s Garden, Jean de Florette.  These films are all saturated with a sense of place in their use of color, sounds, and music, something I try to convey in my writing using only words.   

Is there a work of art that you love?  Why?  Have you ever visited it in person? 

The first time I went to the Louvre in Paris, I stood dumbstruck before a small painting by Rembrandt called “Christ at Emmaus.” The artist is referencing the incident in the gospel when, after the resurrection, Jesus appears on the road to two of his friends who do not recognize Him, walking and talking with them about all the events of the crucifixion. The two men invite Him to have supper with them, and the painting portrays the moment when Jesus lifts up a piece of bread, and the men suddenly recognize Him.  The painting is very dark, with most of the room in shadows, the only light emanating from the luminous face of Christ, shining onto his two companions and a servant. The painting has such an air of mystery and enlightenment about it that I have never forgotten it. I would hope to convey some of that same sense of both mystery and illumination in the final scene of my novel.  

What do you worry about? 

Right now I worry about our country.  The poet Theodore Roethke wrote, “In a dark time, the eye begins to see,” and this is certainly a dark time with such hatred and fear and ugliness in our society. How is it possible that we in the United States of America have allowed our government to lock up refugee children in cages, separated from their families?  How can we keep allowing our police departments to kill unarmed Black men and women with impunity?  How do we keep in high office people who lie to us daily, concerned only with re-election? Great writers like James Baldwin years ago and Michelle Alexander today in The New Jim Crow have uncovered the systemic racism that pervades our government, law enforcement, businesses, even the press and the publishing industry. I still have hope that “the arc of history bends toward justice,” but we as writers and citizens have to do our part in the bending. 

What brings you great joy? 

Especially now during a world-wide pandemic, I find joy and hope in nature. Every morning, before it’s too hot, I walk from my house in a new development outside of the city of Austin toward green fields dotted with tall stalks of golden sunflowers, stretching for acres.  The path is bordered by wildflowers, whose names I am learning:  Mexican blanket, Firecracker Ferns, Esperanza (hope!), Lantana, Red Yucca, and Rock Rose. Noisy grackles, black as coal, sail through the sunflowers, and the blue sky of Texas arches over me, dotted with white puffy clouds. I breathe deeply. I think of Hopkins’ poem, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God/  it will flame out like shook foil.” Then, as Dante says, I thank  “the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.”