Author/Activist
Maryanne Raphael is author of over a dozen books, & her life of service has included work with Mother Teresa and the Yippies!
Maryanne Raphael is author of over a dozen books, & her life of service has included work with Mother Teresa and the Yippies!
[ See Obituary -September 17, 2021]
Early life
The oldest of ten children, Maryanne grew up in the small Appalachian village of Waverly, Ohio (named for Sir Walter Scott's WAVERLY NOVELS.) As a child, she was constantly writing plays for all of her siblings to perform.
Her first rejection slip (from St. Anthony’s Messenger) arrived when she was five years old. Her grandfather typed and mailed her story, "Pray for the Wanderer." He told her, “a rejection slip proves you are a writer. You wrote something and sent it out.” Twenty-five years later, she sold a revised version of that original short story to Catholic Digest.
At Ohio University she majored in Creative Writing and Romance Languages, was Phi Beta Kappa, and editor of Sphere, the literary magazine. She won a scholarship to the Sorbonne in Paris. Her auto-biographical novel, UNE ANNEE A PARIS won first place from the Alliance Francaise.
International Creative Work & Activism
After living in France and working with the USO in Germany, she went to the Caribbean where she met and married Lennox Raphael, the Trinidadian writer and artist. They traveled together through four continents, including living in Morocco and Rio, where they became celebrities in the Brazilian art scene under the signature LENMAR.
Traveling through the South in the US during the freedom rides, they were arrested for being together in a White waiting room. Their relationship is documented in their co-written GARDEN OF HOPE.
Their son Raphael was born in the lower east side, New York City. While Maryanne's husband was directing the controversial Off-Broadway play Che, she was active in civil rights, the Women's Liberation movement and other social activism, including working with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin and the Yippies.
She was also a member of the famed UMBRA WORKSHOP, with Pulitzer Prize nominated Ishmael Reed, writers Steve Cannon, Tom Dent, David Henderson, and others. As avant-garde poet in 60's Manhattan art scene, she read with Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Calvin Hernton, Norman Pritchard and others.
Among her professional roles, Maryanne taught at Ohio University, the New School for Social Research in New York City, and at the University of Hawaii. She was also an editor at Prentice Hall and Woman’s Day Magazine.
Independently, she also founded the small publishing house Bhakti Press and the international writer's magazine Writer's World, later absorbed into Writer's Digest. And she has documented her years as Co-Worker of Mother Teresa in her MOTHER TERESA, CALLED TO LOVE and WHAT MOTHER TERESA TAUGHT ME.
Other service work included disaster relief for the Red Cross in Hawaii, work with at-risk teens in the Americorp VISTA volunteer program in New York, work as social worker in Hawaii, and volunteer work for Catholic charities in Appalachian Ohio.
Writings
Her first book RUNAWAYS, AMERICA'S LOST YOUTH (co-author Jenifer Wolf) (Preface Anais Nin) was republished by the Authors Guild BACKINPRINT. Her personal account of her wellness challenges is retold in her ALONG CAME A SPIDER.
Later work includes novels THE MAN WHO LOVED FUNERALS, ALEXANDRIA (co-author Patricia Walden), and ANAIS NIN, THE VOYAGE WITHIN. (Other published interviews include Margaret Mead and Anais Nin.)
Coming full circle, St. Anthony Messenger Press, the company that gave her the first rejection slip as a child, published WHAT MOTHER TERESA TAUGHT ME. It was also published in Arabic.
Her latest books are DANCING ON WATER and SAINTS OF MOLOKAI.
Maryanne's work also appears in the collections From Eulogy To Joy, An Anthology, compiled by Cynthia Kuhn Beischel with Kristina Chase Strom, Recovering Your Lost Self From Adversity, An Anthology Edited by Art Martin and Tony Stubbs and A BOOK OF MIRRORS.
[ Other titles no longer in print include: The Key to Success: Your Psychic Powers; Raps on Astrology; Akita: A Dog for All Seasons; How to Survive as a Freelance Writer (1978); An Interview with Anais Nin: Under the Sign of Pisces (1978); and How to Survive as a New Age Writer (1990).]
[ See Obituary -September 17, 2021]
Maryanne with sister-in-law Enid Raphael. Mid 1970s, New York.
01/18
Copyright © 2021 Maryanne Raphael - All Rights Reserved.
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