Interview with Melanie Sumner
The Provincetown Banner, Provincetown, Massachusetts, 2008
By Melora North
Q. You were a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in ’93-’95, what did you think of this little, liberal town after coming from the south?
P-town? Bunch of godless reprobates. I fit right in.
Q. Did you meet your husband here? How did you meet?
I did meet David in Provincetown. He claimed that he followed me home one rainy night, when I was stomping along in big green rubber boots under a broken umbrella, trying to figure out if I was crazy or not. I don't know what he decided, but a few weeks later we met on the sidewalk in front of the UU, went for coffee, and talked for hours.
Q. You had many adventures together, Alaska for one. What was that like? (Still not smoking?) What qualified you as a weather reporter or was your husband one?
I don't smoke. Weather reporting in Alaska, in the winter, is pretty easy. It's snowing. Our job was located in the bush, 100 miles from the nearest human being, and we were mostly paid in food, so we didn't face much competition for the position. I bailed after a month, thinking David would follow me back to Valdez, but the federal government needed someone out there, so they left him stranded for three more months. That was scary. During that time I realized I was pregnant with our first child. Our dog Sadie, who I got as a puppy while living at the Fine Arts Work Center, had eight puppies, and I ended up with nine dogs in a six hundred square foot travel trailer, nauseous and worried about David --- he was alone so long that he lost his voice. When he finally got out of the bush, David decided we should set out for New Mexico, which has as many sunny days per year as Alaska has dark days. The New York Times gave me a job to finance our move: we flew in a photographer – P-town resident Cleveland Storrs, and did a pie-tasting report on Route 66. We were hired to taste pies at diners, but we actually started at the Arctic Circle, where there is no diner, so we made a lot of stuff up.
Q. On that Q&A you sent me there is reference of you coming from Ohio originally, how old were you when you moved to Rome? How old were you when you left?
Six years old, eighteen years old.
Q. You say in the Q&A that you attended private school for high school, was that a local school or did you go off somewhere else?
I graduated from Darlington School in Rome Georgia. It's both a day school and a boarding school.
Q. What inspired you to join the Peace Corps? Why Senegal?
I was a cocktail waitress with a graduate degree in Creative Writing. I was a bad waitress. For some reason, I kept telling my customers that I wasn't really a waitress, I was a writer... They almost never tipped me. I didn't apply specifically for Senegal - I had some remote Caribbean Island in mind, some place where a lousy waitress could get a hammock with a view and a nice umbrella drink...luckily, I don't always get what I want.
Q. You have a BA in religious studies, how did you manage to switch gears and go on for an MA in creative writing?
I chose my undergraduate major because it had the best reading list, and because I wanted to study under a brilliant professor who calls himself Mr. Tyson. We read Robinson Crusoe and Kant. He loved Montaigne and Keats. He dared us to think.
Q. Have you ever done anything with your religious degree?
Yes, I hung it on the wall.
Q. In your books you have a lot of twists, where do you get these quirky ideas from?
If you walk under a broken umbrella for a while, they come to you.
Q. You have traveled and lived in so many places. From what I am piecing together, it started with the PC. Were you brought up in a home where travel and curiosity were encouraged and enjoyed? Do you travel with your kids? If so, where? Will they come to the Cape next week? How old are they, what are their names?
Zoe Page Marr is ten years old; she's a budding actress and writer, and Sumner Rider Marr (Rider) is six years old. He likes carnivorous dinosaurs, electric eels, and platypuses. They will be coming up to the cape with me in April, and we're all looking forward to a whale watch and a visit with Aunt Patti and Uncle Ciro. My parents were the first people in their families to ever leave Kentucky, other than my grandfather, who moved to Kansas during the depression. Even as physician, he couldn't find work, so he took the house apart, nail and board, sent it all back to Kentucky on the train, and rebuilt it. So no, I don't come from gypsies. These days, my family does quite a bit of international travel, and I stay home.
Q. Having two young kids and teaching and writing, how do you manage to do it all?
I'm very organized, and my parents babysit for free. I also have a strong network of friends.
Q. College students are so young and fresh, do they inspire you in some way?
I love to work with college students; we do a lot of extracurricular activities in my creative writing classes: caving, contra-dancing, meditation retreats.
Q. What will you be reading from? How do you decide what to select? I read somewhere that you like to do a bit of performance for your readings. Have you taken any acting to help with this process?
When I gave my first reading, at some little dive in NYC, a more established writer listened to me mumble through my story and told meafterwards ---"Read like a preacher." No acting lessons, but as I get older, I become more of a ham. I'm reading a selection from my novel-in-progress, *Christ in the Desert, which is set in Northern New Mexico. This my third official rewrite of the book, and I hope to finish it by July. The story, which is narrated by a witch who dies on the first page, centers around the struggle of a young man who survives a botched double-suicide. There's a girl, and a shaman, and lots of red rock and blue sky. *Christ in the Desert was the original title of The Ghost of Milagro Creek. The book was rewritten two more times after this interview.
PHOTO: Melanie Sumner with poet Joshua Weiner Reading at the Fine Arts Work Center 1994
Photographer/artist: Dan Rupe
P-town? Bunch of godless reprobates. I fit right in.
Q. Did you meet your husband here? How did you meet?
I did meet David in Provincetown. He claimed that he followed me home one rainy night, when I was stomping along in big green rubber boots under a broken umbrella, trying to figure out if I was crazy or not. I don't know what he decided, but a few weeks later we met on the sidewalk in front of the UU, went for coffee, and talked for hours.
Q. You had many adventures together, Alaska for one. What was that like? (Still not smoking?) What qualified you as a weather reporter or was your husband one?
I don't smoke. Weather reporting in Alaska, in the winter, is pretty easy. It's snowing. Our job was located in the bush, 100 miles from the nearest human being, and we were mostly paid in food, so we didn't face much competition for the position. I bailed after a month, thinking David would follow me back to Valdez, but the federal government needed someone out there, so they left him stranded for three more months. That was scary. During that time I realized I was pregnant with our first child. Our dog Sadie, who I got as a puppy while living at the Fine Arts Work Center, had eight puppies, and I ended up with nine dogs in a six hundred square foot travel trailer, nauseous and worried about David --- he was alone so long that he lost his voice. When he finally got out of the bush, David decided we should set out for New Mexico, which has as many sunny days per year as Alaska has dark days. The New York Times gave me a job to finance our move: we flew in a photographer – P-town resident Cleveland Storrs, and did a pie-tasting report on Route 66. We were hired to taste pies at diners, but we actually started at the Arctic Circle, where there is no diner, so we made a lot of stuff up.
Q. On that Q&A you sent me there is reference of you coming from Ohio originally, how old were you when you moved to Rome? How old were you when you left?
Six years old, eighteen years old.
Q. You say in the Q&A that you attended private school for high school, was that a local school or did you go off somewhere else?
I graduated from Darlington School in Rome Georgia. It's both a day school and a boarding school.
Q. What inspired you to join the Peace Corps? Why Senegal?
I was a cocktail waitress with a graduate degree in Creative Writing. I was a bad waitress. For some reason, I kept telling my customers that I wasn't really a waitress, I was a writer... They almost never tipped me. I didn't apply specifically for Senegal - I had some remote Caribbean Island in mind, some place where a lousy waitress could get a hammock with a view and a nice umbrella drink...luckily, I don't always get what I want.
Q. You have a BA in religious studies, how did you manage to switch gears and go on for an MA in creative writing?
I chose my undergraduate major because it had the best reading list, and because I wanted to study under a brilliant professor who calls himself Mr. Tyson. We read Robinson Crusoe and Kant. He loved Montaigne and Keats. He dared us to think.
Q. Have you ever done anything with your religious degree?
Yes, I hung it on the wall.
Q. In your books you have a lot of twists, where do you get these quirky ideas from?
If you walk under a broken umbrella for a while, they come to you.
Q. You have traveled and lived in so many places. From what I am piecing together, it started with the PC. Were you brought up in a home where travel and curiosity were encouraged and enjoyed? Do you travel with your kids? If so, where? Will they come to the Cape next week? How old are they, what are their names?
Zoe Page Marr is ten years old; she's a budding actress and writer, and Sumner Rider Marr (Rider) is six years old. He likes carnivorous dinosaurs, electric eels, and platypuses. They will be coming up to the cape with me in April, and we're all looking forward to a whale watch and a visit with Aunt Patti and Uncle Ciro. My parents were the first people in their families to ever leave Kentucky, other than my grandfather, who moved to Kansas during the depression. Even as physician, he couldn't find work, so he took the house apart, nail and board, sent it all back to Kentucky on the train, and rebuilt it. So no, I don't come from gypsies. These days, my family does quite a bit of international travel, and I stay home.
Q. Having two young kids and teaching and writing, how do you manage to do it all?
I'm very organized, and my parents babysit for free. I also have a strong network of friends.
Q. College students are so young and fresh, do they inspire you in some way?
I love to work with college students; we do a lot of extracurricular activities in my creative writing classes: caving, contra-dancing, meditation retreats.
Q. What will you be reading from? How do you decide what to select? I read somewhere that you like to do a bit of performance for your readings. Have you taken any acting to help with this process?
When I gave my first reading, at some little dive in NYC, a more established writer listened to me mumble through my story and told meafterwards ---"Read like a preacher." No acting lessons, but as I get older, I become more of a ham. I'm reading a selection from my novel-in-progress, *Christ in the Desert, which is set in Northern New Mexico. This my third official rewrite of the book, and I hope to finish it by July. The story, which is narrated by a witch who dies on the first page, centers around the struggle of a young man who survives a botched double-suicide. There's a girl, and a shaman, and lots of red rock and blue sky. *Christ in the Desert was the original title of The Ghost of Milagro Creek. The book was rewritten two more times after this interview.
PHOTO: Melanie Sumner with poet Joshua Weiner Reading at the Fine Arts Work Center 1994
Photographer/artist: Dan Rupe
