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M.M. De Voe once ran away with a group of jugglers. She has also hitchhiked across Germany, been in a John Waters movie, forgotten her bag in a pub in the Australian outback, accepted coffee from a homeless man, and danced for Pope John Paul II. Her MFA is from Columbia, where she won a Writing Division Fellowship and studied under Michael Cunningham, Joyce Johnson, Helen Schulman, Stephen Koch, Nicholas Delbanco and Michael Scammel. She won a fellowship to attend the Summer Literary Seminars in St. Petersburg, Russia in June 2008, and was briefly Co-Director for the 2009 Summer Literary Seminar in Lithuania. She is an associate editor for the literary journal Our Stories, where she teaches private online workshops, and she is also a freelance book doctor (by referral only). Finally, M.M. DeVoe is Executive Director and founder of Pen Parentis, which provides inspiration and resources to authors raising kids. Under this aegis, she would like to invite all authors at any level to attend the monthly Pen Parentis Literary Salons in Lower Manhattan. You do not have to be a parent to enjoy the amazing writers that Pen Parentis invites to read and be inspired by--the salons are free and open to the public, and are an excellent networking opportunity.
De Voe’s short fiction has been widely published and has won multiple mentions and awards, including: The Raymond Carver Short Fiction Competition, PRISM: international short fiction competition, Phoebe's Short Story Contest; nowCulture.com's Annual Poetry Contest; H.E. Francis Short Story Competition; Fish Publishing's Short Story Prize, the Dana Awards; and first prize nationally in the Lyric's Annual Poetry Contest. She is a three-time Pushcart nominee, as well as a nominee for Best of the 'Net and Best of the Web. In 2009, she won first place in two national short-short competitions. Her short story, Overheard, can be found in Stirring up a Storm, a collection of literary erotica that also includes fiction by Margaret Atwood and Joyce Carol Oates. She won the Regina Russo Outstanding Recent Graduate Award in June 1999, and has been listed in Who's Who of American Women and Who's Who in the World since 2004. She won two Editor's Choice Awards for short fiction published in 2007. Her story, Dulce Domum, is available in the anthology, Best of TFL Editor's Picks: 2002-2006. Her short story Leave Me made the short list for the Eric Hoffer Award/Best New Writers anthology, but was ultimately published in the Wordstock Ten anthology. In 2010, her work was published in the Bellevue Literary Review and is forthcoming in Green Mountains ReviewSee You Later, will be anthologized in the UK and published in Black Static 18.
M. M. De Voe's novel in progress won an Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation Grant for historical novels with gay-positive characters, as well as an honorable mention for the Bellwether Prize. She is a member of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) and American Literary Translators Association (ALTA), and she speaks fluent Lithuanian. She is a native Texan who lives in Manhattan with her husband and two great kids.
Q: Who most influenced your writing process, style, or technique?
Michael Cunningham for his entreaties to stay creative and think outside the box. Kazuo Ishiguro for being an example of successfully doing so. Richard Powers who writes very smart books, books about ideas as well as people.
How does the reality of being a published author differ from the dream?
The reality is that I always feel unemployed. The minute I sell a piece, I’m off either writing the next one or wondering where it will place. Not a lot of time to relax and thrill at any accomplishments. It can feel frantic.
What was your first published work, and what did you do to celebrate it?
When I was in college, I entered "The Lyric’s" national poetry competition with a villanelle I’d just finished in my prosody class…boy was I floored when it won first prize. I didn’t even celebrate, just sank down on the floor staring at the $1000 check.
Q: Loved Ants! Great reader too. I listened to it on the way home and sat in the car an extra five minutes to hear the end. So what is next? Will you be posting more stories soon?
M.M.: I'm delighted you enjoyed my story. I have a lot on my plate right now administering a writing seminar in Lithuania and working on a novel, but as I am a firm believer in the spoken word as well as the written word, I do hope to have another story or two up on Sniplits in the near future. In the meantime, I'm busily working on a proposal to start a reading series in downtown Manhattan. Thanks so much for taking the time to write. And to listen!
Q: As a fellow Sniplits author, I wonder if you prefer writing short stories to other forms of writing. Always interested in the opinion of a published writer. Thanks, Tom Anselm
M.M.: What an interesting question! I have to admit that in my own writing, forms tend to emerge according to two things: 1) how experimental is the work, and 2) how much time do I have at a stretch. As my two children have gotten older, I have found I am enjoying the longer forms, but back when my son was born, six years ago, it was impossible to concentrate for more than a few hours at a stretch at best. (Ants was written when he was about two.) At that time, writing short stories was a lifesaver. In short fiction, I am able to really experiment with form and style. Nowadays, I tend to concentrate on longer forms, though I do still occasionally write a short story when feeling experimental. If you've visited my personal website, you've seen some of the extraordinarily experimental forms I've tried, including a story that was written according to the hours on a clock (which wrote messages back to the main character), and one with no descriptions wider than a three-inch square (from the point of view of a stalker). Both of these stories won prizes - so I guess it's fair to say that so far, my readers tend to prefer my short fiction! We'll see what they say when my novel manuscript finds a home.
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A southern gothic with a crazy rich woman who insists that intelligent ants are infesting her house.
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See You Later, to be published in Black Static 18, 2010
Empty, to be published in New Millenium Writings, 2010-2011
Treasure, published in Green Mountains Review, Spring 2010
The Champion, published in Bellevue Literary Review, Vol. 10, No. 1, Spring 2010
Leave Me, published in The Wordstock Ten, with other finalists from the 2009 Wordstock Short Fiction Competition, by Franklin, Beedle & Associates, Inc., 2009
Audition and Virgin Flight 244, Chicago to Heathrow, published in Literal Latte, November 2009
Dulce Domum, published in Best of the First Line II: Editor's Choice 2002-2006 by Blue Circle Press, March 2008
Keep Watch, published in Sojourn: A Journal of the Arts, August 2007
From the Leaf Lore, published by Fickle Muses: an online journal of myth and legend, February 2007
Ants, published in THEMA, Just Describe Them to Me, Autumn 2006
Down Below, published in The Oklahoma Review, Fall 2006
Dulce Domum, published in The First Line, Autumn, 2006
Susie's Song, published in Triplopia, Vol. V., Issue 1, Memory, January/February 2006
Bipolar, published in Subway Chronicles, September 2005
Overheard, published in Stirring Up a Storm: tales of the sexual, the sensual, and the erotic, by Thunder's Mouth Press, New York, 2005
An Annual Checkup, published in Ladyfriend, #8, The Health Issue, Winter 2004
Riding Off, published in Intersections, Columbia Daily Spectator, Arts Issue, May 5, 2004
The View, published in Bee Museum, the journal of Baltic Writers in English, Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring 2002
Sigita Washes, published in Bee Museum, the journal of Baltic Writers in English, Vol. 1, No. 2, Summer 2002
Family, published in Slant, Vol. 11, No. 1, Spring 2000
Family, published in PRISM: International, Vol. 38, No. 1., Fall 1999
A Rose, published in the PEN Anthology, Lithuania: In Her Own Words, an anthology of contemporary Lithuanian writing, by Tyto Alba, Vilnius, 1997, edited by Laima Sruoginis