Marylee MacDonald

Marylee MacDonald wanted to be either a woman wrestler or a star on the Bay Area Bombers' roller derby team. Instead, this widowed mother of five became a carpenter, historic preservation teacher, and writer for shelter, consumer, and trade magazines. Her work has appeared in Sunset, Better Homes & Gardens, Consumer Reports, RSI, Journal of Light Construction, the National Park Services series "Preservation Briefs," Northwestern University's alumni magazine, and the journal of the Association for Preservation Technology.

When her children graduated from college, she began writing fiction and creative nonfiction. She has published in The Briar Cliff Review, North Atlantic Review, The Bellevue Literary Review, River Oak Review, StoryQuarterly, Raven Chronicles, Ruminate, and Four Quarters. She has been the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship and received an honorable mention in the Isak Dinesen Creative Nonfiction Contest. In 2006, she was the Virginia G. Piper Writing Fellow at the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University where her second husband, Dr. Bruce E. Rittmann, is the Director of the Center for Environmental Biotechnology.

Her novel, Unpaid Labor, about mothers who would do anything to keep fate from harming their children, was a finalist for the 2006 Bellwether Prize, and her short story collection, What Am I Doing Here?, was a finalist for the 2008 George Garrett Fiction prize.

Because of her personal experience as a family caretaker, she is committed to helping well spouses find compassionate, realistic solutions for long-term care. On her web links, you'll find a list of books she recommends on caregiving.

If you have any books that have been meaningful to you, or if you have direct experience as a caregiver of a person with a long term illness such as ALS, Alzheimer's, MS, brain disorder, retardation, or another debilitating medical condition--especially if you have simultaneously been trying to raise small children--please contact Ms. MacDonald via her email link.