born to a family of nature enthusiasts, Marcie Mara-Ann developed a profound love for nature while spending all the summers of her childhood growing up on the back of a horse. while other girls were learning to use their curling irons and talk on the phone, she was learning how to build a fire in the rain, fly fish for dinner in an alpine lake, and survive in the stunning, rugged beauty of the Colorado Rocky Mountain wilderness. during the school year, Mara's urban youth was defined by band practice, planetarium field trips, volleyball, walk-a-thons, disco and then new wave. once at college, she turned vegetarian, started listening to public radio, stopped wearing a bra and started protesting injustice.
via crunchy Boulder and ever luminous Sweden, Mara moved to San Francisco in the fall of 1991 to take
flight as an avant-garde poet and coincidentally dropped in for a new era in electronic music and the emergence of the world wide web. spanning a decade, she has been inspired and infused by San
Francisco Bay Area experimental writing, music, and performance ; trans-world explorations through Asia,
Europe, and the Americas; mindful practices in yoga and meditation; and a continuously evolving love affair with the wild beauty of California's
flora, fauna, and her endlessly innovative West coast culture. these rich alchemical forces have
tempered Mara into a multi-media collaborator working with musicians, dancers,
and visual artists. her mentors include Lyn Hejinian, Leslie Scalapino, Carla Harryman, Fred Frith, Maggie Nicols, Katherine Mezur, Juliana Spahr, Stephen Ratcliffe, Walter K. Lew, Maggi Payne, Molly Holm, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Edwin Torres, Gino Robair, Olivia Block, Terry Riley, and Pauline Oliveros. Mara holds an MFA from Mills College in creative writing with cross disciplinary emphasis in music, media, and performance.
as an artist working with language, M. Mara-Ann expresses her creativity through writing, singing,
and mixed media performance. inspired by the musicality of language, her love of philosophy, and the limitless exactitude of abstraction, Mara's approach to language is fearless with a passion for *hybridity* and *experimental forms*. often, Mara's artistic process involves the creation of a core manuscript such as lighthouse, or more recently Containment Scenario, from which a family of related multi-media works emerge both as excerpt and exponent. this constellating dialogue can be seen with the CD Luminous, the audio-visual installation the mirrorrim, and the multi-media performance Containment Scenario as they relate to the book, Containment Scenario: DisLoInterMedTextIdentCation: Horse Medicine, due in print early 2008. as a poet that sings, a writer who performs, and a storyteller creating immersive multi-media shows, Mara's greatest
creative goal is to help inspire a more sustainable, compassionate, and peaceful world for all of us.
born to a family of nature enthusiasts, Marcie Mara-Ann developed a profound love for nature while spending all the summers of her childhood growing up on the back of a horse. while other girls were learning to use their curling irons and talk on the phone, she was learning how to build a fire in the rain, fly fish for dinner in an alpine lake, and survive in the stunning, rugged beauty of the Colorado Rocky Mountain wilderness. during the school year, Mara's urban youth was defined by band practice, planetarium field trips, volleyball, walk-a-thons, disco and then new wave. once at college, she turned vegetarian, started listening to public radio, stopped wearing a bra and started protesting injustice.