Featured Interview With Mark David Gerson
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I grew up in Montreal and attended Concordia University, one of the largest universities in Canada. Back then, I never imagined becoming a writer. I had no idea what I might want to do with my life. So after switching majors a bunch of times, I settled on a business degree as the most practical option for someone as indecisive as I was at the time. As it turned out, it was my first two jobs after graduation, in public relations, that unexpectedly paved the way for my writing journey.
Speaking of journeys, it was an even more convoluted one that carried me from Montreal to LA, my current home. Over the years, I have lived in three Canadian provinces (Quebec, Ontario, and Nova Scotia) and, now, five US states (Arizona, Hawaii, New Mexico, Oregon, and California), several of them multiple times!
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
As I’ve already mentioned, I never wanted to be a writer. Even back in school, all I wanted was to get through English class and its writing burdens as painlessly as possible. My Muse, however, had other plans…
My Muse had always had other plans. How else can you explain my first typewriter? A gift in my freshman year of high school, it was a sleek, green Hermes — an unusual brand. Hermes, of course, was the Greek god of communication…and, thus, writers.
And how can you explain why I agreed, a few years later, to be in charge of publicity for the senior high school musical? It was out-of-character for me to take on anything that involved not only writing but making my writing public.
I like to joke that my Muse tricked me into becoming a writer, and that’s how it began — with that typewriter and the publicity gig.
From high school musical press releases, I graduated into college musical press releases, gaining enough local renown that I found myself freelancing as a theater publicist. Suddenly, I was being paid to write!
From college, I went to work at a dynamic p.r. startup. It was still mostly press releases, but I was writing. Unfortunately, the startup wasn’t dynamic enough. Less than a year later, I was laid off.
It was my next p.r. job that accelerated my transformation into a full-time writer. Not only did I prepare press releases, I wrote news and feature articles, something I had never done before. And thanks to the media contacts I gained on the job, I began freelancing on the side, thrilled to see my byline in major metropolitan dailies and national magazines. After a few years of that, I converted my side gig into a full-time one. To my astonishment, I was supporting myself as a self-taught writer and editor.
My writer’s story could have ended there, but it didn’t…nor did the behind-the-scenes machinations of my Muse.
You see, I still refused to see myself as creative. A skilled artisan with words, perhaps. But certainly not creative.
That changed one morning during a simple water-cooler conversation. I was working in Toronto as an in-house freelance magazine editor when one of the staffers corralled me.
“I’ve just taken this amazing creative writing workshop,” she gushed. “You’ve got to take it.”
In a moment as out-of-character as the one when I agreed to run publicity for my high school Hello, Dolly!, I said yes.
Nothing was ever the same for me after that workshop.
Thanks to the instructor — to both her workshops and her mentoring — I discovered that I was creative. I started to go deeper with my writing, to write from my heart instead of from my head. And soon I was teaching my writing workshops.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I spent decades devouring fiction classics of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries as well as nonfiction titles on creativity and spirituality. These days, however, most of my reading leans toward contemporary novelists, especially those who craft page-turning stories around compelling characters. I have no particular favorites, possibly because I so enjoy discovering new authors.
Whenever I’m asked which author, living or dead, I would want to meet over dinner, I always pick Madeleine L’Engle. Although her spirituality was shaped by her Episcopal faith and mine is considerably broader, her work has not only touched me deeply, it has profoundly influenced how I live and write.
As with Madeleine L’Engle, everything I’ve read by Ursula K. Le Guin — fiction as well as nonfiction — has radically influenced my writing and my teaching of writing. In fact, her impact on my creative awakening was so profound that I sent her a copy of the first edition of The MoonQuest as a thank you!
Tell us a little about your latest book?
What if speaking or writing the words “once upon a time” got you jailed…or killed?
That’s the situation in Q’ntana, the land of The MoonQuest, where stories are banned, storytellers are exiled or executed, and the moon, saddened by the silence, has cried tears that have extinguished her light.
Now, one young bard must come out of hiding to embark on The MoonQuest, the long-prophesied journey to restore story to the land and light to the moon. He sets off reluctantly and with no clear direction, knowing only that it’s the stories he tells from his heart that will guide him and keep him and his companions safe, even as they’re relentlessly pursued by the King’s Men — black shirts, black masks and black mounts surging toward them through the black night.
I’d like to add that from the time the first edition of The MoonQuest was published in 2007 until now — with this newest edition that coincides with the current epidemic of book bannings — readers have consistently commented on how current and relevant they find the book to be. And not only American readers.
Perhaps it’s true. But I didn’t write the book with any political agenda, nor did I have any country or period in mind. I began writing The MoonQuest in 1994, and I wrote all drafts but the final one in a different country: my native Canada.
Whenever I coach writers or teach a writing workshop, I always insist that my books are smarter than I am. That The MoonQuest has turned out to be a story not only for our time but for all time proves that!
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