An interview with “Heat City Review” founder Maria McCarthy

Maria McCarthy is a writer with Somerville roots. She is not a writer who was born with the proverbial silver spoon in her mouth, nor did she cut her baby teeth in a posh Ivy-League seminar room.

McCarthy was born in Boston in 1976 to a schizophrenic woman who gave her up for adoption.  Later she was adopted by a couple who died of natural causes before she turned twelve. Her teenage years consisted of a litany of stints in foster homes and state- run facilities.

McCarthy has come out of this hardscrabble background amazingly intact. She has seen her own poetry and prose published in the Boston Herald and a host of literary magazines. She has worked on a number of editing projects, including work on the anthology: “Out of the Blue Writers Unite,” Timothy Gager’s short story collection “Short Street,” and now Hugh Fox’s “Our Gang.” She found the print and online literary journal “The Heat City Literary Review,” and is currently writing her memoir.

I talked with her on my Somerville Community Access TV show: “Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer”

Doug Holder: It seems that good writing often rises out of conflict. Do you think the hard knocks you experienced drove you to write, as opposed, to let’s say, drink?

Maria McCarthy: It did. Growing up I read a lot. I actually ordered books when I shouldn’t of. My mother had to foot the bill before she died. I grew up on “Oliver Twist,” “The Wizard of Oz,’ and “Anne Frank,” of course. After I read “Anne Frank” as a teenager, I started keeping journals because I knew my life was different.

What made me a creative person was that I had such an idyllic life and then it was taken away from me. I became an avid reader when my dad died, when I was nine. I turned into myself at that time–I was very close to my dad. That’s when I started to read and stay in my room a lot. I knew my mother was going to die about a year before she actually did. Up to that time I didn’t know that nursing homes existed. I thought I would have an “Oliver Twist” life I’d thought I’d find a group on the street and survive. I was living in Somerville at the time. I went to St. Clemens and grew up in Davis Square.

DH: You said there are a lot of aspects of your life that are almost unmentionable. Can you mention any here?

MM: I can, actually. For the last couple of years I really struggled with what I should reveal about myself. I think that for anyone to learn from my life in the future I really have to be honest about it. Right before my mother died I saw this movie: “Angel.” This affected what I became as I got older. The movie was about a girl in N.Y.C. whose parents died. Somehow she gets away with deceiving her school about the deaths. She continues to go to school, and went out on the street and did what she had to survive. She went on to college, etc. I’d thought I would be like her when I got out of the foster homes.

DH:  You and the writer Timothy Gager started the online/print literary journal: “Heat City Review”  http://www.heatcityreview.com. What made you undertake such a time consuming and at times unrewarding venture.

MM: Some of it is a selfish pursuit. We get more exposure in the writing community. But, really what prompted it was that we run into so many obscure writers, who write great stuff, and need a push into the limelight. We are actively trying to seek out new writers–who are amazing!

We just nominated six of our writers for Pushcart Prizes: The Pushcart is the biggest award you can get for being published in the small press. An anthology is put out every year. One of our youngest nominees was Ryan Forsyth. He’s great, he’s in his early twenties, and I think this was the first time he was published. We have an amazing lineup including: Steve Almond, and A.D. Winans. We have essays and experimental writing too.

So we are inspired to do this. The only issue we have is with funding. We are talking to other small presses to band together and cut costs. We met with Rusty Barnes of “Night Train Magazine,” and he has been quite helpful.

DH: What do you prefer, editing or writing?

MM: I do like editing when it is all finished and hopefully it looks great. It’s tedious when you are doing it. It’s the same with my own writing. You get a great idea, but when you are actually doing it you think: “Why I am doing this?” At the end it usually is worth it.

DH:  You’re working with a legendary small press writer and poet Hugh Fox on his memoir “Our Gang.” Fox is a figure of almost mythic proportions in the small press. How was it working with this guy?

MM:  I am honored and grateful to be working with Hugh. This will be probably one of his last books. The difference for me is that I have done a lot of copy editing for friends in the past. But I was able to be honest with Hugh.  He is a very laid-back person. I also feel a lot of pressure because so many people will buy this book, and it will be in a lot of libraries.

DH: Tell us a bit about the book?

MM: It details Fox’s interactions with all these great poets and writers like A.D. Winans, Lyn Lifshin, Len Fulton, Ed Harris, and Harry Smith. The bulk of the book is about Harry smith who gathered all these writers around him. Fox had a love-hate relationship with him, but that’s how most relationships are, no? Hugh is open about a lot of things.

DH: Word has it that you are working on your own memoir. Are you afraid of alienating people if you air all your dirty laundry?

MM: One of the most seediest nights of my life, which is on my website www.mariamccarthy.com involves two close friends. They say this is the best writing I ever did. You need to capture reality. All writing revolves around love, hate, birth, death, and love. It’s just the way you present it–how convincing is it?

DH: Is Somerville a good place to be a writer?

MM: It’s a great place to be a writer.  Somerville has always had an artsy quality to it. It was a lot different when I grew up here. The stores I knew growing up were family stores, and there was no train station in Davis Square. The train station changed things a great deal.