An Interview with Marlis Manley Broadhead

Marlis Manley Broadhead, a former college instructor of all forms of written communication except Braille, has award-winning short stories and poems in literary magazines—including Kansas Quarterly, Mikrokosmos, Crosscurrents, and Kansas Women Writers. Her debut novel, Trophy Girl, published by Black Rose Writing, was awarded the William Faulkner second prize in 2018. Her second book, Is That Your Mother Calling? Advice That Echoes Down Through the Ages, was based on research of hundreds of people sharing stories of advice they remembered and its effects on their lives. Her most recent book is The Mendocino Poems, and a second novel is in the hands of the Sandra Bond Agency in Denver, CO.

While still living in Wichita, her hometown, where she earned her MFA in Creative Writing with distinction, Marlis started a Learning Skills Center at the Vo-Tech School for refugees from the Viet Nam War—located on the campus of her alma mater, Wichita High School East. In 1981, she and her family moved to Ames, Iowa, where she taught Business Communication at Iowa State University and worked as an editor for Better Homes and Garden’s Building Department.

Thanks to the development of fax machines, Marlis took that writing job to northern California. There she also taught a variety of writing classes at College of the Redwoods in Fort Bragg, founded the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference (still going), helped start a homeless shelter (a disaster eventually), helped form the Mendocino Coast Children’s Fund (still thriving), and steered Fort Bragg Center for the Arts—a public showcase for local artists, who outnumber regular folks out there five to one.

At home in Kansas, she lives with her husband and a small menagerie on a modest horse ranch where she is working on her third novel, about an empty nester looking forward to discovering what else she might be able to do with her life now that it’s her own, but because of a family crisis her nest refills with five generations.

Who/what made you want to write? Was there a particular person, or particular writers/works/art forms that influenced you?

My sixth-grade teacher had us write a book intended to decenter us by including chapters that began with ourselves, then our families, our homes, neighborhoods, etc., and ending with the planet. I went a step farther for fun, and finished up in outer space. That was also the year I started writing sophomoric love poems (I was only ten, for corncake), and became the dial-a-funny-rhyming-poem person in our family for gag gifts and secret Christmas Santas. But being a self-conscious, only child of four parents really got me going because I buried myself in books—and that, of course, is the best way to learn how to write. So I did.

What other professions have you worked in? What’s something about you that your readers wouldn’t know?

Let me count the ways…let’s just say I’ve done a lot of stuff—some of which I was prepared for but much of which I simply stepped into. Freight-loading dock worker, bindary worker, charter of the New York Stock Exchange weekly numbers for a publication, instructor to women who bought Bernina sewing machines, research asst. coding styles of writing in twenty-six university subjects, editor for magazines, and of course educator of college writing, although as a visiting writer I also worked with students as young as fifth grade and with senior scholars (sixty-two and older) through my university. In fact, that job led to me visiting a western Kansas gig for other “senior scholar” programs. Complete works of Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost in hand, I headed into western Kansas and ended up in places where there were a lot of seniors with chins on chests and wheelchairs galore. I managed to get some of them talking about memories and some did some note-taking, and then I got to a large red brick building sitting alone on the prairie, and went into a huge room of physically and mentally impaired folks, some who could hold pencils, some who could dictate to aides who could hold pencils. Thank heaven there was a whiteboard. The one thing they all had in common was their names, so I taught them acrostic poetry using first names. During writing time, a motorcycle accident who heard I was there from Wichita, KS, came over to tell me he was from there too, and we made a bit of a connection. Later, when I asked who would like to read their poems aloud, he stood and read “John—Only—Hurts—Now.” There was a stir of air in the room. The others got it. They were so much more present than I’d realized. The other memorable outcome was the man in the middle of the room who chewed on his bare toes the whole time while still managing to keep an eye on me. When I felt I could wind things up, those who were ambulatory were told to pass by and thank me. They did, and sure enough there came the toe-sucker, sock and shoe back on, hand reaching out to shake mine, and he said, “Ya done good. Kep’ ’em busy. That’s what they need.” I cried the thirty miles back to my motel, and of course wrote a short story later based on that unique experience.

Tell us the story of your book’s title. Was it easy to find, or did it take forever?

My husband—who told me I had to write about my racing experiences with my two fathers’ (both named Frank) racing careers after I took him to a race—came up with the title. I was fixated on the dirt ovals in the novel (my first father raced a Deutsche-Bonnet on asphalt), and kept playing with running circles, but nothing worked. Then Glenn pointed out a pal of the champion driver the orphan girl suspects/hopes is her real father tells him she’s the real trophy. Trophy Girl.

How did it feel when you first saw your book cover? Or when you first held your book in your hands?

The designer got really close to what I was picturing and captured the essence of a young girl focused from a safe distance on a race car driver circling the track, and it felt right. I had sent him the covers of two books with similar art as a guide.

If your book had a soundtrack, what are some songs that would be on it?

Because of the time period, summer of 1957, there would have to be early Elvis, probably mooney country music, and I’d like to set some of the scenes to my husband’s early songs—”I See Al’s Behind the Bar Tonight,” about aging alone, and “Handy Man,” about a no-strings love affair. And something by Johnny Cash, just to get that gravelly voice churning against the growl of the engines and scrape of tires burning rubber on the fourth turn.

What is one thing you hope readers take away from reading your book? How do you envision your perfect reader?

That family is what you make of it, and it’s never too late to chase the dream—but for cornsake don’t wait. I published poetry and short fiction early, but I was thirty-two years writing and publishing my first novel, my big dream. Now I’m on fast-forward. Don’t. Wait.

What was the most rewarding/meaningful part of publishing your book?

Creating a story for my family that recalls some of our years enmeshed in the heady, wacky world of car racing and a reminder of my step-father who was our rock and a hero on and off the track—but entirely human with foibles that endeared him to us. And the 5-star reviews told me I’d made a decent job of it for casual readers.

What new writing projects are you currently working on? Or, other projects that are not writing?

The writer’s conference I started in 1990 just finished this year’s sessions, and I love coming back to see how it’s flourished in the many, many years since I moved away. I was always busy organizing and planning and schlepping, but I was never present as a fellow writer, which is to say vulnerable. This year I decided it was time to cross that threshold. I read two poems from my latest chapbook, The Mendocino Poems, inspired by my experiences teaching there, in my all-time happy place. My literary projects are mentioned in the bio, but in addition to those, I’m also writing a novel called Paper Boats about my experiences creating a vocational learning center for refugees from the Viet Nam War, have outlined a sequel to Trophy Girl, have put together a draft of another chapbook of poems called Catching Up the Baby Books, and if I can find an artist willing to work with me I’ve outlined a book currently titled I Dream of Toilets, based on my continual dreams of toilet contraptions and circumstances that seem to be endless—both the dreams and variety of “models.” (Not one of which you would hope to find waiting for you when nature called.) Once, when I told a not-favorite therapist my latest dream had a one-way mirror in the bathroom, but it was looking out, not in, she became uncharacteristically engaged and said she thought I was making some progress. If only.

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