Marylee MacDonald

Award-winning author and writing coach

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FICTION
A desperate mother goes to Prague to find her missing son (winner of the American Literary Review Fiction Prize, 2010).
Walter goes to Thailand and finds the locals staring at his birthmark (winner of the Matt Clark Prize from New Delta Review, 2009).
When Mother Gokhale moves in, Leslie Flynn must come to terms with her intercultural marriage.
CREATIVE NONFICTION
The true story of a fifteen-old girl's journey to motherhood.
An art project opens the door to a child's thoughts of death.

The Ambassador of Foreign Affairs

SUN FILTERED through the redwoods and fell on the hotel balcony where Kiyoshi Tanaka held a black mug in his palsied hands. Stretching his legs to rid them of cramps, he blew on his tea, sipped, and hoped the caffeine would carry him through dinner. Only three hours before, his plane had landed in San Francisco; he'd made it safely to the eastern shore of the Pacific, his first time in America, and tonight, he would meet the family of the groom. His daughter Mayumi, thirty-seven, shivered and buttoned her sweater.
     "Up here in Marin County," she said, "it's always foggy."
     "Is it warmer where you live?" he asked.
     "Much," she said, "but in Sunnyvale, the sky's so brown, you can hardly see across the bay."
     Tanaka looked back at the trees, wrapped in shrouds of mist.
     Minako nodded toward the forest. "Do you know what they are?"
     "Sempervirens," he said. Always living, but fossils, like himself.
     Japonica or sequoia? He put his cup on the table. After huffing on his lenses and wiping them with his handkerchief, he stood and peered into the dusk. Sequoia, no doubt. The trees grew admirably straight and joined at the sky. Birds twittered. He felt a haiku coming and patted his pocket.

Briar Cliff Review