An award-winning Elgin author will release her second book next month.
The setting is far away from her Midwest town. Christina Marrocco teaches at Elgin Community College. She is also a Chicago Writer Association's Book of the Year Award winner. WNIJ’s Yvonne Boose speaks with her about her upcoming book "The Way Beauty Comes Apart."
Extended audio file.
YB:
Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me.
I read two stories. I got through the first one and the second one, and I love the twist that I wasn't expecting, like when Yolanda popped up, I'm like, 'okay, what's going on here?’ I want to talk about your writing journey. When did you first start writing? Tell me about that.
CM:
Well, I'll go back to the very beginning. My godmother will always tell the story of me being grounded to my bedroom and writing notes to my mother begging to be let off with various kind of like rhetorical approaches. But I didn't start writing seriously until I was in my 30s, so I began my educational journey at 34. I went to community college, and that's when I took my first creative writing courses. And then I, along the way, decided, 'well, I'd like to teach writing as well.' So, I went on to Northern and I took courses from great writers there, like Amy Newman and Joe Bonomo.
YB:
When did you first decide you wanted to publish?
CM:
You know, my first publication was at the school journal at Elgin Community College. I feel like sometimes, when you begin publishing it, it creates a river for publication. It makes things easier. You know what you're doing a little bit, and also you hunger for sharing what it is that you've created and for getting feedback.
YB:
I know both the books, they're a string of stories that are intertwined or relate to each other. Where'd that idea come from? As opposed to just writing a novel?
CM
It just kind of happened. When I sat down to start writing, that is what materialized. And then I said, ‘Oh my gosh, what is this thing that I'm making?’ But if I really think back also into the subconscious. You know, what did I love when I was in eighth grade, [the] Spoon River Anthology. When you were reading The Way Beauty Comes Apart, you got Cranstal Jones, and you heard about Yolanda. Yolanda is going to tell her own story, and that's going to open up crevices that Cranstal was not going to show you.
YB:
The first book, it was based on a fictional area near Chicago, and then the second one was Wales. Can you tell me what was the different writing process for writing those two stories for different locations?
CM:
So, the first location is near Melrose Park, which is where my mom grew up. It's inspired by stories I heard about relatives and neighbors and all of that. It's fictionalized, but I'm a part of that community. But I do not live in Wales. It's a beautiful place. I would love to live in Wales. I don't live there. I was visiting there and just and fell in love with, with it. Came home and started reading Welsh writers and just looking at the landscape and the nature. And then had these kinds of characters, vignettes, just kind of pounding at the door, you know? And I felt like, I want to write these. And then I thought, ‘ooh, I'm not Welsh. I don't live in Wales. If I'm going to write this, how do I do this right?’ It was more and more reading about Wales. It was revisiting the place, but it was also employing a Welsh reader to read for authenticity, to read for language, mood. It was then approaching another Welsh editor who writes crime stories and having her read over my manuscript and saying to her, 'Listen, if this isn't right, this, I'm not going forward with this,' and her saying to me, 'I love it.'
YB:
And then I wanted to ask about the characters, the first, at least the first two that I read, I noticed they died very young. Was that intentional?
CM:
There are a few different things working there, right? One of them is, if you walk through a graveyard, anywhere that is, you know, predating, you know, the 1920s, let's say, you're going to see a lot of, a lot of graves, of young people and of children, and I think that was a reality of the time.
YB:
Is there anything else you think our listeners need to know about what you have coming up next?
CM:
You know, it's hard to say without sounding big headed, but I'm going to say this is a good book, and I really hope people read it, because I think that it's something that's very different.
