Prose: “Words in Their Best Order”
Coleridge defined prose as “words in their best order,” and I’ve been writing – or attempting to write – such prose almost my entire life. Over the years, I’ve written reams of prose, from tiny hand-written journals I composed as a child to most of my published articles, short stories and books.
In my freshman year of college, my prose narrative, “Portrait of Matt,” won a Sigma Tau Delta writing contest and appeared in The Antler, my first publication. At a tea held to celebrate the contest, the Sigma Tau Delta president initiated me into the ways of publishers. “Don’t get a swelled head,” he said. “You didn’t win because your story was so good; you won because the others were so awful.”
Nearly twenty years later, my writing obviously improved, Atlantic Monthly chose to feature my article "Badlands Revisited" on its cover. The piece describes the panic in Lincoln, Nebraska, when mass murderers Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate were presumed to be on the lam somewhere in town, perhaps nearby.
“Badlands Revisited” became part of my book, Great Plains Patchwork, as did many other articles published around that time: “In Praise of Plains” and “The Dust Storms” in Natural History (reprinted by Macmillan, Harcourt Brace, McGraw Hill, Harpers & Row); "Lincoln's Great Bank Robbery," in the Sunday [Omaha] World Herald; and "My Flood Story," purchased by American Heritage and published in Kansas and Nebraska newspapers.
My most famous prose work is my novel, Marcella, published in hardcover in New York, in paperback in England, and excerpted in publications in Denmark and Australia as well as in Ms., The Curse, and Encounter with Family Realities in the United States. The book also earned me a niche in literary history – a curious sort of fame. At that time, Marcella was the first novel written in English that uses female masturbation as part of its theme.
For more recent prose, see Work in Progress.
- Marcella: A Novel (hardcover)
- Marcella: A Novel (paperback)
- The Battle of Orleans: An Illustrated Documentary of the MARCELLA Marathon. Marilyn Coffey Collection, Archives, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries
- Henrietta's Mother: An Orphan-Train Tale. Alma, NE: Omega Cottonwood Press, 1992.
Marilyn Coffey Collection, Archives, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries- Ridin' the Rails: A Pastiche. Orphan-train stories. Alma, NE: Omega Cottonwood Press, 1990.
Marilyn Coffey Collection, Archives, University of Nebraska-Lincoln LibrariesSHORT FICTION
- Hamilton Stone Review, an on-line literary magazine, just published "The Bathrobe Imbroglio," my short story about a one-night stand that metamorphosed into a tug of war, This story, in Hamilton Stone's Summer 2007 issue, is a favorite of mine. Read it and see if you agree.
