Marlene Lacey

Writing History:  I began writing poetry in grade eleven.  I found paper to be a good listener when everything and everyone around me was unstable.  The process helped me not to feel so alone.  At first, much of what I wrote dealt with my feelings and about incidents or things that were embarrassing to me, so once I got my thoughts and feelings out, I would then destroy the paper.  Being shy and introverted, I have always found it hard to share my writing publicly, especially when my writing revealed my more personal thoughts.  At UBC, I was encouraged by my first-year  English professor when I showed him some of my poetry.  In the 90s, I joined many writing groups to see how they gathered the courage to present their work, but found that most members were excitedly extroverted and far from being able to relate to my shyness.  So, my writing for the most part, was non-fiction as I wrote, edited and laid out a multitude of newsletters, manuals, course materials that were typically computer-related or educational in content.  (For example, The Pearl, editor 1984–1993, "Developing Instructional Materials for Text Processing Courses", Association for Computing Machinery, 1989.) Meanwhile, I took many presentation courses that were unsuccessful in helping me over my awkward shyness.   My own course, Five Steps to Success,  was the process that helped me the most.  When I met Regina Coupar, a writer who had published her work, I was able to get the courage to share my more personal work and I was able to delve more into fictional aspects of writing. (For example, Lily Pauline, a collection of personal writings following the death of my mother in 2001, Amos, Amas, Amat, a chapbook collection of writings and readings, 2003; Honouring Mothers 2004,  Artists for Peace 2004/2005; Editor: Marlene Lacey; Blue Grama Publications.)