Mairs
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Nancy Mairs, though born by accident of war in Long Beach, California, grew up north of Boston. In 1964, she received the A.B. cum laude from Wheaton College (Norton, Massachusetts), which made her a Doctor of Humane Letters thirty years later. She did editorial work at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Harvard Law School before moving to Tucson, Arizona, where she earned the M.F.A. in creative writing (poetry) in 1975 and the Ph.D. in English literature (with a minor in English education) in 1984 from the University of Arizona. She has taught writing and literature at Salpointe Catholic High School, the University of Arizona, and the University of California at Los Angeles.
A poet and an essayist, she was awarded the 1984 Western States Book Award in poetry for In All the Rooms of the Yellow House (Confluence Press, 1984) and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1991. Her first work of nonfiction, a collection of essays entitled Plaintext: Deciphering a Woman's Life, was published by the University of Arizona Press in 1986. Since then, she has written a memoir, Remembering the Bone House, a spiritual autobiography, Ordinary Time: Cycles in Marriage, Faith, and Renewal, and three more books of essays, Carnal Acts, Voice Lessons: On Becoming a (Woman) Writer, and Waist-High in the World: A Life Among the Nondisabled, all available from Beacon Press. The work on her latest book from Beacon, A Troubled Guest: Life and Death Stories, was funded by a fellowship from the Soros Foundation's Project on Death in America.
She and her husband, George, a retired high-school English teacher, continue to live in Tucson, though they make public appearances throughout the country. A Research Associate with the Southwest Institute for Research on Women, she also serves on the boards of ARTability, the Sonora Fund, Kore Press, and the Coalition of Arizonans to Abolish the Death Penalty.
