A Conversation with Mary Collins, Author of A Play Book
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I’ve known Mary Collins as a friend, fellow writer, and fellow Connecticut native for 25 years (how did that happen?). From our first meeting on the Virginia street where we both lived at the time, she has given me both encouragement and spot-on feedback, as she has done for others as a teacher and mentor. She is a professor and director of the Writing Minors program at Central Connecticut State University, teaches the nonfiction workshop for Yale Summer Writing Program, and taught in the writing program at Johns Hopkins University for 12 years.
Mary has published three well-researched and well-crafted nonfiction books on different aspects of U.S. history and society. Many of her ideas made their way into the very different type of book that she wrote and illustrated, entitled A Play Book. Mary is now doing workshops and events to share the ideas in the book.
On October 12, 6 to 8 pm, at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, she is leading a Free Association Writing workshop. As she told me, “it is ideal for writers at all stages [and genres] since it’s meant to jumpstart a new way of thinking. It focuses on process and reading habits.”
And here’s what she had to say about the ideas in A Play Book and how it came to be:
Q: Can you introduce the book first—what is it and what motivated you to create it?
A: I did not set out to write this book; it came to me in waves over a two-year period. I am so grateful that as a tenured professor I could afford to take a chance, go with the flow of an unusual project and then see it to completion. On some deep unconscious level, I needed to wrestle with why I was seeing such a steep decline in my students’ ability to handle open-ended projects without a rubric, to roam on assignment as writers and come back with ideas and material, and to just interact with each other in free-flowing conversations.
To answer that question, I needed to get back to something that felt free flowing in myself, but after thirty years of writing books and articles, I admit I was totally burned out. Instead, I picked up watercolors and began painting things that felt whimsical and joyful. I was telling stories to myself as I painted a toboggan, for example, but I was also trying to reach back into a playfulness that my students lack and figure out how I achieved it in my own life as a child and adult. I did not see the ending until I finished the essays: that all of this is directly tied to our faltering public discourse and inability to raise functioning citizens for our democracy.
Q: I finished your book while I was on a train. I started drawing what I was seeing—but it was scary! How did you move from words to images in your creative time? How did you decide to include your illustrations in the book?
A: I found it so refreshing to think in a creative way but with a totally new medium—not words, but paint, water, and brushes. I do not have a lot of skill and zero training, but I let go of worrying about that and realized that when I paint, I really notice things. I get into flow and improved a lot in just three months. I got to the point where I could make a credible painting of what I wanted, which was so satisfying.
Q: Amidst the reflections, you have some very strong words about how kids are being raised today and the differences you have seen in students over the years. What dismays you—and what, if anything, gives you hope about “Gen Z”?
A: What gives me hope about people under 35 in the U.S. is that my own son, age 30, inspired my project. He had the chance to do many of the things I feel we’ve cut children off from, such as having lots of unstructured time as a child, tons of exposure to nature, art, and noncompetitive activities, and almost no gaming and little social media until college. So it’s not that our generation is “better” by any means. We are seeing the impact of a generation raised on endless access to screens, social media, and gaming—a well-worn complaint, I know—and it’s not pretty. We think our public discourse is bad now, well it’s going to continue to decline if we neglect the important task of raising curious, open-minded thinkers who understand the difference between opinion and fact and who see the power of sharing stories and ideas, not dogma.
At one of the lowest moments of my teaching career, which I discuss in the book, a student asked me to give her a rubric she could follow to write a poem. She wanted a formula (not just sample poems) and had little skill for taking chances, trying something new, and being open. And to be honest, it’s probably not her “fault” but the failing of the entire educational system she’s been put through for years. As Tim Snyder points out in his incredible book On Tyranny, this sort of thinking leads to citizens who want to be fed a story—not facts—and be told what to think and to adhere to the story no matter how much people try to disprove things. Look at what Putin is doing in Russia as he spins the tale about the Ukrainian invasion. I know it feels like a huge leap, but I am trying to convey that it’s not. It’s a terrifying trend and it's happening right now in the U.S.
Q: Right, the book is very whimsical on the one hand but very serious on the other. Many of your ideas—about childhood, nature, community participation—are in your previous books, nicely footnoted and organized. This presents those ideas in a very different, non-linear way. So maybe talk about that?
A: This is a great question because it gets at how people’s reading habits have changed. If, as a writer, I don’t work harder to meet them where they would rather be, I will not reach them. And it’s precisely the nonreader who I want to pick up this book. Several people who are not readers by any means have told me that they loved the short flash essays and read the entire book. The whimsy drew them in and then the intense, serious closer made them think. We are in a world where mixed media is here to stay. I just embraced that.
Q: Along those lines--Creating Writers, Creating Citizens—with that subtitle, what would be the ideal way that you wish people would read and use your book as an individual or in groups.
A: I created a series of cards with some of the art on the cover and group activities on the other side. The book is part memoir, but it’s also truly a workbook. I want people to read it and then think about ways to open their minds, to tap into some of the lessons I showcase from the classroom. I am targeting not just creative writing programs but also parenting groups and national organizations involved in improving public discourse. How do we have conversations centered on story-sharing and empathy, not opinion and dogma? It’s vital we figure it out and, I hope, A Play Book, is a whimsical way into very serious engagement.
Q: I love this line when you were talking about discerning different tastes—“That sensation of awakeness lies at the root of good creative work.” How does that relate to your own creativity?
A: I use my creative work to make sense of my life and my world. It’s a way to have a dialogue not just with myself but with some imagined target reader. If I stopped “conversing” in this way, I feel I would stop living on some fundamental level. To be “awake” means you stay in motion.
Q: A note about the physical book itself. The cover both looks and feels lovely (very nice paper!). And I know you worked with your friend and colleague Ed Perlman to publish it through his imprint, Entasis Press. So what was that like, versus working with a commercial or university press?
A: After I received a supportive email from an editor who loved the book but could not publish the art, I felt I truly had a book on my hands but not a conventional one by any means. I had worked for 12 years with Ed, a Poetry professor and advisor for the MA in Writing program at Johns Hopkins. He has a small literary press for poetry and fiction, Entasis Press.
Ed said yes, even though it’s nonfiction, and he fully embraced the amateur art. He was the one that insisted I put the cow on the cover! I feared people would consider the book silly, but he insisted on the “existential truth” that the cow represents and wanted people to wonder, what the hell is this? I’m laughing out loud even as I say this because it meant so much to me that Ed “saw” the full project as soon as he read it. He added front quotes, improved the section structure, and I reordered some of the essays. Suddenly it all made way more sense. The free-flowing approach I took to the pieces meant it didn’t quite cohere and Ed helped me adjust that.
Q: Anything else to add?
A: I cannot express how satisfying it has been and continues to be to hear from people who have read the book and embrace everything about it. I am shocked, actually, how enthused and even emotional people have gotten after reading the book. It’s clearly tapping into something we all know is missing. The approachable paintings and flash essays help reveal what that is and why it matters. Thank you so much for taking the time to read it, respond and to give me a chance to reflect on these things. It’s just so satisfying. I’ve already gotten out of the book way more than I ever expected and, well, isn’t that the beauty of the creative mindset?
To read more about this and Mary’s other work, visit her website. To learn more about Entasis Press, go here. Order A Play Book through Amazon or an independent bookstore at Bookshop.org.