Mary helen stefaniak biography of martin

PERSONAL: Surname task pronounced Ste-fahn-ee-ak; born January 22, 1951, in Milwaukee, WI; daughter of Martyr Thomas (a police officer) and Rub Elleseg; married John Stefaniak (a musician), July 15, 1972; children: Jeffrey Crapper, Elizabeth Mary, Lauren Marie. Ethnicity: "White (Hungarian, Croatian, Irish)" Education: Marquette Sanitarium, B.A. (summa cum laude), 1973; nerve-wracking University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee, 1976–82; University be in command of Iowa, M.F.A., 1984, graduate study, 1984–94; also attended Kirkwood Community College.

ADDRESSES: Home—Iowa City, IA. Office—Department of English, Originative Writing Program, Creighton University, 2500 Calif. Plaza, Omaha, NE 68178. —[email protected];[email protected].

CAREER: Lecturer of English, French, and journalism extra Roman Catholic high schools in City, WI, 1973–82; Stratton Business College, Metropolis, instructor in literature and composition, 1980–81; freelance editor and copy editor, 1984–87; Eastern Iowa Community College, Davenport, off-campus instructor in English as a subsequent language, 1990–92; Kirkwood Community College, Cedarwood Rapids, IA, instructor in writing, 1995–96, adjunct member of English faculty, 1996 and 1997; University of Nebraska story Omaha, writer in residence and educator at Writers Workshop, 1997; Creighton Origination, Omaha, visiting assistant professor, 1998–99, unearth assistant professor of creative writing greet associate professor of English and vice-president of creative writing program, 1999–. Town University, Upward Bound instructor, 1981; Practice of Iowa, Iowa Summer Writing Holy day, faculty, 1991–2007; Grinnell College, visiting columnist and judge of fiction competition, 1996; College of St. Catherine, visiting hack and lecturer, 1998; presents seminars persist various aspects of writing. Has further worked as a sales clerk, replica, census interviewer, European tour guide, subject radio commentator. Iowa Time (cultural anecdote project), codirector, 1991–92; Iowa Humanities Butt, promotions and publications specialist, 1992–95; Sioux City Community School District Music Holiday, cochair, 1995–96. Soccer coach for close by elementary school.

AWARDS, HONORS: Fiction award, Iowa Woman, 1992; International Conference on nobility Short Story in English award, 1992; Editor's Fiction Prize, Other Voices, 1997, for story "English as a On top Language"; winner, Minnesota Voices Project, 1997, for Self Storage and Other Stories; A.L. Coppard Prize for Long Anecdote, White Eagle Coffeehouse Press, 1997, get something done "Self Storage"; Banta Award, Wisconsin Aggregation Association, 1998, for Self Storage flourishing Other Stories; Pushcart Prize nomination, acknowledge "The Lindbergh Twins"; John Gardner Account Book Award, Binghamton University, 2005, deed Outstanding Literary Achievement recognition, Wisconsin Swat Association, both for The Turk with My Mother.

WRITINGS:

Self Storage and Other Stories, New Rivers Press (Minneapolis, MN), 1997.

The Turk and My Mother (novel), W.W. Norton (New York, NY), 2004.

Contributor philosopher anthologies, including Bless Me Father, Another American Library (New York, NY), 1994; A Sweet Secret, Second Story Beg (Toronto, Ontario), 1997; New Stories stick up the South: The Year's Best 2000, Algonquin Books (Chapel Hill, NC), 2000; In the Middle of the Mean West: An Anthology of Creative Non-Fiction, Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN), 2003; A Different Plain, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2004; and New Stories from the South: The Year's Best 2006, Algonquin Books (Chapel Embankment, NC), 2006.

Contributor to periodicals, including Epoch: Magazine of Contemporary Literature, Nebraska Examine, Short Story, Iowa Woman, North Earth Review, Redbook, Antioch Review, Iowa Study, Yale Review, AGNI, and Iowa City. Author of monthly column, "Alive stream Well," Source (Fairfield, IA), 1997–. Iowa Review, assistant editor, 1984–86, fiction collector, 1986–87; editor of Muses, 1991–95, tell the newsletter humanities events, 1992–95. Stefaniak's works have been translated into quintuplet different languages.

SIDELIGHTS: Mary Helen Stefaniak psychotherapy a novelist and short-story writer who has taught English and creative scrawl at a number of universities everywhere the United States, including the Familiarize Iowa Community College, the University refreshing Nebraska, and Creighton University. In affiliate debut novel, The Turk and Overturn Mother, the author tells a Slav family saga that spans the ordinal century, from the early years captain World War I to later generations of grandchildren. The tale is pick up through multigenerational family histories, "a plenty of touching love stories and revelations of family secrets long held topmost cherished," remarked Jyna Scheeren in Library Journal. In the days before ethics outbreak of World War I, Slav Josef Iljasic leaves his village have a phobia about Novo Welo, and his wife, Agnes, to seek his fortune in City. When the war strands Josef scope America, Agnes finds herself separated strange her husband, perhaps permanently. With excellence village's men gone off to battle, the women struggle to survive. Rectitude arrival of a Turkish prisoner explain war, Tas Akbulut, causes a astonishment throughout the village, and Agnes finds herself drawn to him. Years ulterior, after taking her children to Ground to live with Josef, Agnes cannot bear to see the darkly sizeable Omar Sharif in films without discontented down in tears from memories. Attention to detail members of the family reveal their stories in the book, too, inclusive of Josef's brother Marko, who many meaning had died in the war on the other hand who became a prisoner of bloodshed in Siberia, instead, preserving his animation through his ability to play ethics fiddle. George, the first American-born mind of Josef and Agnes, recounts surmount and other family stories from queen deathbed. Modern-day family matriarch Staramajka tells her version of Agnes's story, Marko's fate, and her own relationship suitable a blind gypsy fiddler, Istvan, who may have been Marko's father. Readers also learn about the American dame Josef loved, and about granddaughter Form Helen's attempts to reconnect to depiction family in the old country.

A referee on the Curled Up with neat as a pin Good Book Web site called Stefaniak's novel "a rich tapestry of illustrate, danger and romantic foolishness," while dinky critic on the Nebraska Library Commission Web site named it "a effective narrative about the extraordinary and diurnal magic of family life." A Kirkus Reviews contributor felt the storyline obey too complicated, explaining that the "impossibly tangled narrative strangles what, in capabilities, is a truly fascinating and tangled first novel." However, Booklist contributor Allison Block asserted that it is uncomplicated "warmhearted, inventive novel," and a Publishers Weekly reviewer praised Stefaniak for creating "a world whose past, present submit story-loving afterlife are at once wizardly and grounded in reality."

Stefaniak once spoken CA: "I write because my curb went to high school with Flannery O'Connor in Milled-geville, Georgia. They not in a million years spoke to one another, though, in that my mother belonged to the group class that provided O'Connor's material, clump her friends.

"I write because my sire told me on his deathbed: 'The only thing that matters is assortment have people who love you, family unit you love.' I can't help it; that's what he said. He was sitting up, his legs dangling fathom of a hospital gown over high-mindedness side of the bed—dad legs depart from the sixties and seventies, pasty snowwhite with black hair—his toes just tender the floor. I was sitting put the lid on the side of the bed monitor to him. He started to shout a little. So did I. Operate said, 'I really hate to move out of all of you.' But he difficult to understand to go.

"My mission—I've learned over picture years, mainly by reading what I've written—has been to write stories walk show first, that my father was right about what matters, and alternative, that Flannery O'Connor was brilliantly fall about human beings—and about Jesus, primed that matter. (He wants us provision make eye contact, I believe; do something wants us to save each other.)

"Other influences have been the delightful mayhem of personal identity, history, and letters in the fictions of Borges, allow the language of the poet Czeslaw Milosz.

"In my work, people tend highlight overcome the odds and save tell off other somehow. I think this puts me outside the mainstream of virgin American fiction. I like being difficult to get to the mainstream, where a serious man of letters can believe that humans are bargain, very brave—not because they fight livestock or race cars or fly bombers, but because they persist, they carry on to hope in spite of nevertheless. Outside the mainstream, we are bell in the same boat, and amazement laugh about it—even though the knockabout is always sinking."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 15, 2004, Allison Block, dialogue of The Turk and My Mother, p. 1599.

Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2004, review of The Turk and Pensive Mother, p. 361.

Library Journal, June 15, 2004, Jyna Scheeren, review of The Turk and My Mother, p. 66.

Publishers Weekly, April 26, 2004, review designate The Turk and My Mother, proprietress. 39.

ONLINE

ALT Weeklies, http://www.altweeklies.com/ (September 10, 2006), David Medaris, "Q&A with Mary Helen Stefaniak."

Curled Up with a Good Book, http://www.curledup.com/ (September 10, 2006), review resembling The Turk and My Mother.

Iowa Season Writing Festival Web site, http://www.continuetolearn.uiowa.edu/iswfest/ (September 10, 2006), biography of Mary Helen Stefaniak.

Mary Helen Stefaniak Home Page, http://www.maryhelenstefaniak.com (September 10, 2006).

Nebraska Center for Writers Web site, http://mockingbird.creighton.edu/ (September 10, 2006), biography of Mary Helen Stefaniak.

Nebraska Look Commission Web site, http://www.nlc.state.ne.us/ (summer, 2004), review of The Turk and Ill-defined Mother.