A Conversation with Idaho Writer Patricia Marcantonio

Photo by Jessica Garcia

BY HEATHER HAMILTON-POST

It’s very hard work. And I love it. It’s challenging–to come up with stories, and deal with the language and find the right words to say what you mean.

“My father couldn’t read, and I would tell him stories I made up. I was always writing, and in junior high school, my parents bought me a typewriter,” explains Idaho writer Patricia Marcantonio. “So I was always sending stuff out, and after I got married, I wrote my first novel. It was horrible,” she says, laughing.

Growing up, Marantonio was shy–she says she only had one friend, whom she remains friends with today–and liked to read, which made her kind of a target for bullies. She pauses, speculating, “and maybe that’s where some of these books “It’s very hard work. And I love it. It’s came out of. In challenging–to come up with stories, the end, it is just and deal with the language and find the right words to say what you mean. your imagination, you’re trying to tell a story about different people and what they go through, and hopefully, you’ll get a few readers that know what that feels like. I love characters that have wounds. When they go on their journey through your novels and they come out the other side, changed for better or worse. I like that about humanity. I think we’re all just writing about humanity, the damages and wounds, and how we come out of that,” she says.

Marcantonio’s work, although varied, is filled with strong, complex characters who navigate the world with gusto, bravery, and heart and it is easy to see why the writer, who has long been an active part of Idaho’s literary scene, is flourishing. The recent recipient of an Alexa Rose Foundation grant, Marcantonio produced and directed her original play, Tears for Llorona, at the Hispanic Cultural Center of Idaho, later adapting it for Radio Boise. She’s written short films, children’s books, courtroom dramas, mystery series, screenplays and probably more–Marcantonio says she is always up for a challenge and hopes to write a science fiction novel eventually. She’s also curated anthologies and collaborated on various projects throughout her career.

“I have a desk full of story ideas that I’ll probably never get to. When I worked as a reporter, I’d always come back with two story ideas. You always have to ask what’s right, or what if this happened? I love to tell stories, but I didn’t get published until later in life. I’m very fortunate I’ve had the career I’ve had,” she says. “I think writers always wonder if they can really write. When I was waiting for COVID-19 test, I’d just gotten the audio version of Felicity Carrol and listening to it in my car, I thought, ‘Oh man, I wrote this.’ And it was kind of an epiphany.”

Marcantonio says that she often jokes that her family makes up a big part of her readership, and that they account for a lot of her book sales. An exaggeration, certainly, but they’re so much a part of her work that they’ve almost got to read it. She says that they’ve always supported her career, and her daughter even acted in Tears for Llorona. Marcantonio is inspired by her siblings too–she’s adapted an urban legend her brother shared with her and is working on a vampire novel that she says was entirely her sister’s idea. And although she doesn’t really write nonfiction these days, her heritage shows up a lot–she’s currently trying to find a publishing home for a children’s book about a little girl learning to cook Mexican dishes with her grandparents, which contains recipes from her own childhood.

One of Marcantonio’s first books, Red Ridin’ in the Hood and Other Cuentos, infuses Latino culture with classic tales, a decision based on her own experience with a lack of representation. “If Latino kids pick it up, I want them to say ‘that’s me in there.’ I want non-Latino kids to learn about the culture too. These old stories are universal,” she says. “When I read Hansel and Gretel, the universal message was the resilience of children, and that was easy to write,” she says.

Marcantonio describes her taste in books as eclectic, which might explain the tremendous breadth of her writing. On the heels of two published mysteries and a horror book, she’s working on a romance. “I was tired of killing people off on the page, so I wanted them to fall in love. But my agent told me ‘You kill them off so well’,” she says, laughing.

And, while her work is always fun, it requires an intricate knowledge of the human condition and is a constant balancing act between gravity and levity.

“It’s very hard work. And I love it. It’s challenging–to come up with stories, and deal with the language and find the right words to say what you mean. And sometimes people get it, and sometimes people won’t. But you know, I just kind of make it a rule that if I don’t love it, then how can anybody else love it?” Laughs Marcantonio. “And you know, I love it.”

PATRICIA’S LATEST BOOKS

Marcantonio’s latest Victorian mystery series, Felicity Carrol and the Perilous Pursuit and Felicity Carrol and the Murderous Menace (Crooked Lane Books) is available in print, as an ebook, and as an audiobook at bookstores near you.