We asked Mara Feeney, author of our debut publication, Rankin Inlet: A Novel, why she waited so long to produce her first novel. "Well, I always intended to become a writer," she explained, "but I got sidetracked." She went to Bryn Mawr College to take creative writing courses, but fell in love with Anthropology, instead. While earning her undergraduate degree, she spent her summers working and travelling in the Canadian Arctic. Subsequently, she went to work full-time for the Government of the Northwest Territories in the capital city of Yellowknife, but she yearned to get back to Rankin Inlet, where she had formed lasting friendships with community residents. She did return there and worked for several years as a regional Housing Officer, serving remote communities around the Hudson Bay, before attending graduate school at the University of British Columbia.

After that, her life took surprising turns. She spent a year travelling around the world, then settled down to a career in socioeconomic consulting, first in western Canada and then in northern California, writing lots of environmental impact analyses and community outreach plans. 

"On my fiftieth birthday, I smacked myself on the head and said, 'Hey, you meant to be an artiste!' That's when I cut back on consulting work and signed up for painting and writing classes," Mara explains. We're glad she did, and we look forward to reading more of her work in future.  

Mara has been making up for lost time in the creative arts. In addition to having her first novel published in 2009, she won first prize in the Great Northern Canadian Writing Contest. Her winning story, "A Keewatin Tale," was published in the September-October 2009 edition of Above & Beyond magazine. She also had a short story and a poem published in Manzanita: Poetry and Prose of the Mother Lode and Sierra, and she has sold several of her original acrylic paintings.