Past keeps writer in present

Elburn isn't known as a writer's colony, but it is home to Cris Mazza, a serious writer of fiction who has attracted a national audience.

Mazza is the author of 12 books of fiction (including collections of short stories), and "Indigenous: Growing Up Californian," a collection of personal essays.

Her latest book, "Waterbaby," was published by Soft Skull Press in October.

The novel tells the story of a middle-aged woman, hampered by epilepsy, who travels to a seacoast town in Maine to work on a genealogy project.

Among her other titles are "Homeland," "Disability," "Former Virgin" and "Dog People."

Mazza, now in her early 50s, is also known for her criticism of the "chick-lit" genre of novels and has tackled such topics as disability, mental illness and the harmful subtleties of sexual harassment in her novels.

She is also a professor of English and director of the doctorate program for writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

"If I was going to characterize all of my books, I would say they are about how a person's interior world affects their exterior world," Mazza said during an interview in the home she shares with her husband Jim Comunale and their four dogs. The shelves around the fireplace in her living room are filled with sculptures of dogs.

"My characters are troubled by things they cause. I write about their reactions and how it affects their decisions and their relationships.

"My characters are also obsessed with their pasts, as is characteristic of many writers. I'm obsessed with my past.

"As I think about things from my past, I come to certain realizations. For example, some of my earlier works are concerned with the concept of sexual harassment. I realized later that it was being defined as I was coming of age. Some of my experiences were in a gray area. They were accepted then. They wouldn't be today."

'Waterbaby'

Mazza said that her latest published work, "Waterbaby," is rooted in her obsession with the past but "in a different way."

She got the idea for the book after leaning that her ancestors on her mother's side of the family were part of the lore of a seacoast town in Maine.

The legend concerns a shipwreck during a violent storm in 1875. The lighthouse keeper at the time was Jaurel Marr, Mazza's great-great-grandfather. According to the legend, he watched helplessly as the ship disappeared. But soon after, a bundle washed ashore: two mattresses tied together with a box between them. And in the box was a baby.

One version of the legend states that Marr and his wife adopted the baby. Mazza believes that if the baby existed, she might have been adopted by another family.

Mazza's interest in the town and the legend grew when she learned that a historian set about writing a series of articles in 1997 to debunk the legend. Mazza set out to debunk the debunking.

"The reality that a legend has lived and grown for over 100 years is also a type of 'real history' and protecting cultural history can be as rewarding as discovering an actual artifact," Mazza wrote in a paper about her novel.

Serious writer

Mazza's writing is recognized by independent publishers, but she's not considered a commercial success.

The balance -- or dilemma -- of writing about her interests with conviction and making money was something she encountered early in her career.

In 1984 at age 28, Mazza received the PEN/Nelson Algren award for her unpublished manuscript "How To Leave a Country."

"It was a national award that isn't given anymore," Mazza said. "It was for a book-length manuscript in fiction and Studs Terkel was on the panel. The panel found it worthy, but when I flew to New York to meet with editors and agents I was told it wasn't a commercial property."

Her award-winning manuscript finally was released by an independent publisher eight years later, years after she had other works published.

Still, she is recognized as a fine and serious writer.

Christopher Grimes, a fiction writer and assistant professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is using her book, "Disability," to teach a class this semester.

"Cris has a national audience but she appeals to a specific kind of reader," Grimes said. "Her readers are sophisticated. She won't give up her convictions, and these are not easily resolved. She seems to be in between the two worlds of commercial accessibility and writing about her interests.

"She is perfectly capable of being a commercial success." Grimes added. "Her writing is structurally sound. She is a terrific novelist who doesn't shy away from asking difficult questions."

"Cris tells stories the way we actually experience them; that's her genius," Richard Nash of Soft Skull Press said in an e-mail to the Daily Herald. "In so much fiction, actual experience and perception get flattened, ironed out, simplified and condensed.

"The writer must of course find some way to transmute life to the page, but Cris manages to do so with greater fidelity to the backwards-forwards, the strange way our minds bounce from one thing to another, one person to another. Just brilliantly alive."

Cris Mazza

Family: Husband Jim Comunale

Career: Fiction writer and professor of English

Education: Bachelor's degree in journalism and master's degree in English from San Diego State University, master's in fine arts from Brooklyn College

Hobbies: Avid gardener; she and her husband show their two Shetland sheep dogs and two golden retrievers

Native of: Grew up in San Diego County where she raised chickens and rabbits

Favorite team: San Diego Padres, but she has adopted the Chicago White Sox