mary ann rodman
My blogs
| Gender | Female |
|---|---|
| Industry | Arts |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Location | alpharetta, georgia, United States |
| Introduction | I have been every kind of librarian you can think of. Now I have the pleasure of sharing my years of reading, writing and teaching on this blog! No one ever read to me, because I taught myself to read at age 3. However, I come from a storytelling family. Their family stories were far more exciting than anything the school library offered. Much of what I write comes from these tales. Although I have written my whole life it wasn't until 1998 that I became a full time writer. I entered the Vermont College MFA in Writing for Children program, where I not only honed my writing skills, but met most of my fellow bloggers. I love writing, but miss teaching. This is the best of both worlds, writing, teaching through school visits and various workshop gigs. Teaching-by-blog is a new frontier for me. I look forward to making this trip with you. I write picture books, middle school historical fiction, and I am beginning to branch out into YA literature and contemporary middle grade fiction. |
| Interests | History of all kinds, particularly American and oral histories. My daughter is a competition figure skater, so by default, I am a rabid figure skating fan. |
| Favorite Movies | Godfathers I & II, Good Fellas, Chinatown (see a theme here?)Cabaret, The Great Escape, American Beauty, The Sting, Aladdin, Splash, Clueless, Dirty Dancing. Animal House and anything based on Tennessee Williams no matter how awful! |
| Favorite Music | I love everything! It depends on my mood and what I am writing at the moment. However, I am ALWAYS in the mood for Beethoven, Green Day, the Beatles and Allison Krause. Oh, and Motown and the great work of the Memphis Stax studio. I enjoy country music that tells a story, which I think if good training for writing picture books. YOU try coming up with a story that not only rhymes, has a beginning, middle and end, interesting characters and takes only three to four minutes to sing! My country music tastes are pretty old school--Randy Travis, George Jones, Loretta Lynn..plus instrumentalists like Hargus Robbins, Chet Atkins, Flatt and Scruggs. |
| Favorite Books | Charlotte's Web rules! Also Harriet the Spy, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Diary of a Young Girl, Speak, Out of the Dust, anything by Ellen Hopkins. As for adult authors, I am partial to female southern regionalists like Ellen Gilchrist, Josephine Humphries, Jill McCorkle and Lee Smith. Needless to say that Eudora Welty, Willie Morris, and Faulkner (from my adopted home state of Mississippi) are southern, but transcend the regional designation. They are my writing idols! |