Two poetry volumes and a book tour are up next in the unpredictable life of Mamie Morgan
Mamie Morgan has had a varied career, including teacher, writer, waitress, and bridal shop owner, to name just a few. While her poetry has been published widely in journals, she wasn’t sure she’d ever publish a book of poetry with a bigger-name publisher.
And then, within the span of a week, she found out she was publishing not one book of poetry, but two, with two different publishers. Her collection Everyone I’ve Danced with is Dead will be released March 15 from JackLeg Press, and a smaller collection, My Husband is Learning to Draw, publishes February 9 from Finishing Line Press.
“To go from never having published a book to two book offers in a matter of months is . . . interesting,” she says, employing a bit of poetic understatement. Coinciding with the books comes a book tour that will take her from Pennsylvania to Alabama, with numerous stops in-between. It’s her first book tour: “My first everything!” she says.
Morgan gravitated to writing at a young age, starting with journaling and then focusing on poetry, especially as she pursued a master’s degree in fine arts from UNC Wilmington. She was considering her next move when a former mentor invited her to apply for a teaching position at the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities in Greenville.
“Becoming a poetry teacher at a highly competitive arts boarding school is what enabled me to become a good writer,” she says. “There is a joke among poets, you never say that you’re a poet, but I didn’t become a serious poet until I became a good teacher, and that took six, seven, eight years,” she says.
After 15 years at the Governor’s School, she decided to try something new, and “accidentally” became co-owner of Opal Bride, a shop she loves for its “cooler, more inclusive, less stressful way of doing things.”
And she kept writing. The “big book,” Everyone I’ve Danced With is Dead, took 10 years of work, while the smaller book, My Husband is Learning to Draw, took just five weeks. It grew out of her husband Alan’s efforts to learn to draw at the start of the pandemic. “I said I would never write about him, because I tend to write toward mystery and lack, and there is something inherently NOT mysterious about our relationship,” she says. “But witnessing him learn his new craft, it was easy for me and came very quickly.”
As she heads out on her book tour this spring, Morgan is trying to stay confident, a lesson she learned from many writer friends, including Greenville-based novelist Ashley Warlick. “I wrote books assuming no one would ever see them,” she says. “It’s a stark shift, going from being incredibly private about how I write to reading from the books, and people buying them and reading them. I’m excited and completely out of my comfort zone.”
More About Mamie Morgan
Degrees: BA, English and religious studies, Wofford College. MFA, UNC Wilmington.
Work has appeared in: Washing Square Review, The Oxford American, Inkwell, Carolina Quarterly
Lives with: Husband Alan, dogs Henrietta Modine and Wednesday Stewart
Poetry recommendations: Louise Glück, Ross Gay, Ocean Vuong, Spencer Reece, Hanif Abdurraqib, Ada Limon, Frank O’Hara, Meg Freitag
Why poetry? “There’s something about poetry where I can be highly expressive and effective very quickly, and that’s enticing to me. The mobility and the energy—they are fast and small but they are mighty, and I enjoy that.”
Morgan’s sold-out book launch is April 2 at M. Judson Booksellers, but she hopes to add more Upstate events. Check mamiemorgan.com to find out more or follow @mamiemorgan on Instagram.
