THE SECOND ACT: Kai Maristed on Late Blooming, Being Cut to the Ground, and What Came Next

By Kai Maristed

When my third book—my second that was centered on horses—was published by Random House and starred by Publisher’s Weekly, the local paper ran an article headed ‘Late Bloomers’ (true this!) that included a photo of moi posed in jeans beside my barn. The title annoyed me. At a youthful forty-something I’d worked my rump off since high school to get to where I had food, shelter, and a few hours a day for my true vocation since age six. No college lit classes—my professors were the books that I devoured, then studied. So wait, who you calling a late bloomer?

A friend told me to look on the bright side: “All publicity is good publicity.”

Once published, I joined the faculty of first-rate MFA programs with mixed emotions. First, the joy of being able to put my insights into words for bright, thirsty students. Second, mistrust of this institutional, money-based approach to creating creators. After all, I’d left home at seventeen, to job around the world like a wannabe Jack London. (And if the lack of an MFA network had slowed my path to publication, I had no regrets.) GO OUT AND LIVE! I wanted to scrawl on the board, tempted to ditch the classroom myself. But some of my most promising students needed help with grammar.

After those two horse books I wrote a Berlin Wall story. Not an equine in sight, despite Random House’s urging me to build a brand. I had other ideas. They dropped me. The Berlin book finally found a publisher, and praise from J. M. Coetzee, but lackluster sales. A few years later my fifth manuscript ‘went the rounds.’ Round and round.

In the decade that followed my kids grew up and—bloomed!—while my submitted manuscripts vanished like ships in the Bermuda Triangle.

Sadly, my agent died. In the decade that followed my kids grew up and—bloomed!—while my submitted manuscripts vanished like ships in the Bermuda Triangle. Discouraged, tormented by self-doubt, I chose to leave the country of increasingly transactional writing biz relationships. To volunteer in a hospital in Haiti, to live in France, to start up an anti-poverty NGO using the econ skills and experience that had bought me the time to write and to ‘late-bloom’ as an author, so young and long ago. Now that flower was pressed, drained of color, hardly a memory. I was turning older and less attractive to agents and publishers by the day, and besides, “There are no second acts in American lives.”

The NGO made—makes today—a real difference in the lives of the world’s poorest. It’s hard, gratifying work. And mastering a third language (French after German) gives one a third way of seeing. And though I’d quit pestering the gatekeepers, I went on writing—how could I stop, without a straitjacket? Book reviews. Some short stories that found their way into mags and journals. Bless their open-minded editors.

I went on writing—how could I stop, without a straitjacket? Book reviews. Some short stories that found their way into mags and journals. Bless their open-minded editors.

Then, a few years back I saw notice of a prize being given in the name of a teacher from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, a man with whom I’d worked briefly, who had immeasurably eased my way into that MFA world. A wise and warm-hearted inspiration to many. I pulled my best shots together and submitted them to WTAW Press as The Age of Migration.

It was a spring night in Paris, raining gold streaks under the street lamps, when my phone lit up, announcing that Migration had earned the Kevin McIlvoy book prize. My breath stopped. Impossible. I didn’t know anybody. The only thing I’d ever won was a case of Friskies at a cat show when I was twelve. I re-read the message. Then I whooped like a cowgirl. Set out dancing, skipping in the rain. Soaked to the roots, and ready to bloom again.

Kai Maristed’s fifth book, The Age of Migration: A Novella and Stories is out now from WTAW Press. She is also the the author of three novels: Out After Dark (Pen/Hemingway finalist), Fall, and Broken Ground, and the short story collection Belong to Me. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, AGNI, The American Scholar, among others. She heads the anti-poverty NGO Technology Exchange Lab, Inc.. A translator and playwright fluent in three languages, she has taught at the MFA level at Harvard University, Emerson College, and the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. She lives in Paris, France and Wellfleet, Massachusetts.