Mary helen stefaniak biography of abraham lincoln

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

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

CAREER: Handler of English, French, and journalism look down at Roman Catholic high schools in Metropolis, 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 more 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 administrator Omaha, writer in residence and schoolteacher at Writers Workshop, 1997; Creighton Custom, Omaha, visiting assistant professor, 1998–99, strip assistant professor of creative writing take a look at associate professor of English and selfopinionated of creative writing program, 1999–. Town University, Upward Bound instructor, 1981; Asylum of Iowa, Iowa Summer Writing Feast, faculty, 1991–2007; Grinnell College, visiting hack and judge of fiction competition, 1996; College of St. Catherine, visiting litt‚rateur and lecturer, 1998; presents seminars utter various aspects of writing. Has too worked as a sales clerk, pattern, census interviewer, European tour guide, esoteric radio commentator. Iowa Time (cultural novel project), codirector, 1991–92; Iowa Humanities Aim for, promotions and publications specialist, 1992–95; Sioux City Community School District Music Celebration, cochair, 1995–96. Soccer coach for regional elementary school.

AWARDS, HONORS: Fiction award, Iowa Woman, 1992; International Conference on rectitude Short Story in English award, 1992; Editor's Fiction Prize, Other Voices, 1997, for story "English as a In the second place Language"; winner, Minnesota Voices Project, 1997, for Self Storage and Other Stories; A.L. Coppard Prize for Long Fable, White Eagle Coffeehouse Press, 1997, unpolluted "Self Storage"; Banta Award, Wisconsin Over Association, 1998, for Self Storage boss Other Stories; Pushcart Prize nomination, be intended for "The Lindbergh Twins"; John Gardner Untruth Book Award, Binghamton University, 2005, extremity Outstanding Literary Achievement recognition, Wisconsin Think over Association, both for The Turk come first 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 cut into anthologies, including Bless Me Father, New-found American Library (New York, NY), 1994; A Sweet Secret, Second Story Impel (Toronto, Ontario), 1997; New Stories flight the South: The Year's Best 2000, Algonquin Books (Chapel Hill, NC), 2000; In the Middle of the Focal point 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 Elevation, NC), 2006.

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

SIDELIGHTS: Mary Helen Stefaniak in your right mind a novelist and short-story writer who has taught English and creative terms at a number of universities during the United States, including the Accustom Iowa Community College, the University disrespect Nebraska, and Creighton University. In assembly debut novel, The Turk and Empty Mother, the author tells a Croat family saga that spans the ordinal century, from the early years paramount World War I to later generations of grandchildren. The tale is expressed through multigenerational family histories, "a amassment of touching love stories and revelations of family secrets long held contemporary cherished," remarked Jyna Scheeren in Library Journal. In the days before prestige outbreak of World War I, Croat Josef Iljasic leaves his village sketch out Novo Welo, and his wife, Agnes, to seek his fortune in Metropolis. When the war strands Josef instructions America, Agnes finds herself separated shun her husband, perhaps permanently. With righteousness village's men gone off to combat, the women struggle to survive. Righteousness arrival of a Turkish prisoner bear witness war, Tas Akbulut, causes a daze throughout the village, and Agnes finds herself drawn to him. Years afterward, after taking her children to Ground to live with Josef, Agnes cannot bear to see the darkly attractive Omar Sharif in films without discontented down in tears from memories. Agitate members of the family reveal their stories in the book, too, as well as Josef's brother Marko, who many proposal had died in the war nevertheless who became a prisoner of contest in Siberia, instead, preserving his move about through his ability to play rectitude fiddle. George, the first American-born reputation of Josef and Agnes, recounts coronet and other family stories from fillet deathbed. Modern-day family matriarch Staramajka tells her version of Agnes's story, Marko's fate, and her own relationship become accustomed a blind gypsy fiddler, Istvan, who may have been Marko's father. Readers also learn about the American spouse Josef loved, and about granddaughter Rough idea Helen's attempts to reconnect to probity family in the old country.

A writer on the Curled Up with far-out Good Book Web site called Stefaniak's novel "a rich tapestry of pleasure, danger and romantic foolishness," while neat critic on the Nebraska Library Commission Web site named it "a important narrative about the extraordinary and humdrum magic of family life." A Kirkus Reviews contributor felt the storyline psychiatry too complicated, explaining that the "impossibly tangled narrative strangles what, in faculties, is a truly fascinating and convoluted first novel." However, Booklist contributor Allison Block asserted that it is smashing "warmhearted, inventive novel," and a Publishers Weekly reviewer praised Stefaniak for creating "a world whose past, present near story-loving afterlife are at once wizard and grounded in reality."

Stefaniak once booming CA: "I write because my sluggishness went to high school with Flannery O'Connor in Milled-geville, Georgia. They in no way spoke to one another, though, in that my mother belonged to the collective class that provided O'Connor's material, weep her friends.

"I write because my papa told me on his deathbed: 'The only thing that matters is defile have people who love you, descendants you love.' I can't help it; that's what he said. He was sitting up, his legs dangling go on a go-slow of a hospital gown over prestige side of the bed—dad legs hit upon the sixties and seventies, pasty milky with black hair—his toes just stirring the floor. I was sitting lose control the side of the bed go along with to him. He started to whimper a little. So did I. Oversight said, 'I really hate to conviction all of you.' But he locked away to go.

"My mission—I've learned over righteousness years, mainly by reading what I've written—has been to write stories meander show first, that my father was right about what matters, and erelong, that Flannery O'Connor was brilliantly fault about human beings—and about Jesus, tight spot that matter. (He wants us motivate make eye contact, I believe; yes wants us to save each other.)

"Other influences have been the delightful cataclysm of personal identity, history, and facts in the fictions of Borges, captivated the language of the poet Czeslaw Milosz.

"In my work, people tend come to get overcome the odds and save receiving other somehow. I think this puts me outside the mainstream of latest American fiction. I like being unattainable the mainstream, where a serious man of letters can believe that humans are realize, very brave—not because they fight cows or race cars or fly bombers, but because they persist, they persist in to hope in spite of all things. Outside the mainstream, we are repeated in the same boat, and phenomenon laugh about it—even though the craft is always sinking."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

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

Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2004, review of The Turk and Low point 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 in this area 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 commentary 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 Research Commission Web site, http://www.nlc.state.ne.us/ (summer, 2004), review of The Turk and Downhearted Mother.