Interview Conducted by Evelyn Griffith

Evelyn: Where did the inspiration come from for That Very Place?

Mary Ann: The inspiration for each story in That Very Place is different because the stories were written over the course of three or four years, starting in about 2019. Two of the stories are even older than that. The idea for the collection as a whole came when I saw that so many of my stories had unusual settings, places where the events described just shouldn’t be happening, or where the events themselves were difficult to explain.

Evelyn: What can you tell us about how you started developing the themes in these pieces such as Irish heritage, New York City, loss, and parenting/parental influence?

Mary Ann: I don’t begin a story with any theme in mind. It may have a theme by the time it’s done, but invariably the story starts when a character takes up residence in my head, someone who’s in a difficult situation, facing something he doesn’t know how to unravel. The grandmother in “The Last of the Darlin’ Boys,” for example, realizes that she has for many  years unintentionally kept her alcoholic grandson from facing the consequences of his mistakes. She’s a 73-year-old Irish-American, and along with that come characteristics and cultural habits of the Irish. Even so my intention was not necessarily to depict Irish heritage. It was simply to stay true to that character’s background and how such a background would influence her behavior. Of course, I tend to give characters backgrounds I can navigate with ease, which is why Irish-Americans are featured in so many of my stories. The same is true of New York. I was born in the Bronx, lived in Brooklyn for a time, and worked for many years in Manhattan, so the city still feels like home to me.

Evelyn: What was the first story you wrote for this collection? How did it inspire the other pieces?

Mary Ann: The oldest story in the collection is “The Sorrow for Her Loss.” It was first published in 1987 and later evolved into my novel Crossing Into Brooklyn. So this story has a special significance for me, but it didn’t inspire any of the other stories. I didn’t have a collection in mind when I wrote it, but the main character visits a cemetery in a part of Brooklyn she’s never been to before, a rather dangerous part, and winds up in an apartment building that’s been condemned. So the strange setting fits well into the collection.

Evelyn: What was your process when editing this collection? Did all of the pieces come to you at separate times, or did you start writing with the intent of them becoming a collection?

Mary Ann: Each story came to me separately. Most of them were written between 2019 and 2023, but I did not write them with the idea of linking them in any way. Later, when I considered which of my stories might work together as a collection, I saw that many of the settings in my stories were unusual, familiar but somehow off-kilter, like a wedding in a Laundromat or a convenience store with shelves nearly bare. Likewise, the main characters’ lives are off-kilter. The stories that made the cut all had that in common: familiar places laced with something unruly, unlikely situation in which people are connected by bonds they can’t seem to break—an unwanted child, an unloving parent, or the ache of what could have been.   

Evelyn: What was the inspiration for the title?

Mary Ann: My titles—for short stories and even the novels—usually surface while I’m taking walks or meditating. They seem to come out of nowhere. Of course, I knew I needed a title that would somehow emphasize location, so I guess my subconscious was playing around with that idea.

Evelyn: What’s some advice you would give to a young writer just starting out?

Mary Ann: Sit down at the keyboard and write, even if it’s only for a short time each day. And keep submitting. I meet so many writers who’ve written a solid story, but they hesitate to submit their work to journals. You have to develop a thick skin and learn not to take rejection personally. All writers get rejected, some many times over. Getting a novel published is more difficult, of course, but here too I think writers give up too easily. I see self-publishing as a last resort, only after you’ve revised and revised and revised.

Evelyn: Could you tell us about what you’re working on next?

Mary Ann: I’m working on two projects. One is a memoir, a collection of about forty brief, creative nonfiction essays that capture important moments in my life, beginning at age seven to my first day of college. The other is a young-adult novel. I finished it a long time ago, but I never found a publisher for it. It’s about sexual abuse, and I’ve always wondered if it was too far off the beaten path for some editors. So much of YA is either dystopian, fantasy, or predictable and safe. I’m reworking the manuscript, but the core of the story hasn’t changed.