About Gerard Marconi
Gerard Marconi has a master’s degree in Humanities from Johns Hopkins University and in Theatre from Catholic University. He taught drama and produced theatre at the college level for over thirty years and led study trips to theatres and museums in Washington, Baltimore, London, and Florence, Italy. As Coordinator of Cultural Events at the Rose Lehrman Arts Center in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, he sponsored appearances by John Barth, Nora Ephron, and Maya Angelou. He served as president of the Theatre Association of Pennsylvania and a member of the Frederick Arts Council in Maryland. He also studied modern drama in summer sessions at Oxford University and fiction writing with Lee K. Abbott, Roxanne Robinson, and Jennifer Haigh at the Iowa Summer Writers Workshop. His one-act play entitled “Rapture” was given a public reading by the Baltimore Playwrights Festival and his short stories have appeared in The Chattahoochee Review, Somerset Review, The Write Launch, and Mayday magazine, among others. In addition to art, mythology, and religion, his stories and one-act plays deal with such timely topics as contemporary art, gender identity, and artificial intelligence. The Accidental Universe and Other Stories will be published in March by Apprentice House Press.
WEBSITE: www.gerardmarconi.com
BOOKS:
Gods and Heroes, a novel in stories
Searching for Paradise, a collection of short stories
The Accidental Universe and Other Stories, a collection of short stories
BIGGEST LITERARY INFLUENCES:
Lily King, Alice McDermott, Michael Cunningham, John Irving
LAST BOOK READ:
“The Hours” by John Cunningham
THE BOOK THAT CHANGED MY LIFE:
The book that changed my life was published in 2013 by Alan Lightman, an astrophysicist at MIT and Harvard. In The Accidental Universe: The World We Thought We Knew he showed how the discovery of black holes and negative space proved that we live in an accidental universe as well as the existence of multiple universes where anything can and will happen. Lightman also concluded that the existence of human life is a random occurrence in the multiverse. Many of the world’s leading scientists now agree with him and the stories in my collection reflect such conclusions. They also suggest that, in the face of chaos and disorder, we can value each moment of life as special because it is both unpredictable and unique. We can also share that experience with others, which is the purpose of my book.
BOOK DESCRIPTION:
The kaleidoscope of humorous and serious stories in The Accidental Universe and Other Stories begins with a riff on the oldest tale known to man and then takes us from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day and beyond. Some are traditional short stories about one person while others vary the point of view and still others are in the form of one-act plays. Individual lives are explored in different venues and at different times, but they all touch on our search for meaning in a chaotic universe. From the religious beliefs of Christopher Columbus to those of modern evangelicals, from the words of Shakespeare to those of Samuel Beckett, from the paintings of Andrew Wyeth to those of Andy Warhol, and in the lives of grave diggers as well as artists, this unique collection engages the minds, hearts, and imaginations of readers on an unforgettable journey.
Testimonials
” “Gerard Marconi teases the mind in The Accidental Universe and Other Stories. Is life a crapshoot, no matter how you live it? Or is life in the here and now a passage to the unknowable?”
- Sandra Fluck, editor, The Write Launch
” “The short story is a difficult genre to succeed in and Marconi has got spot on and even found a new way of doing it right.”
- Cate Baum, editor, SPR Review
” “Dark humor mingles with pathos in Marconi’s accidental universe where both the living and the dead, the incarnate and the imagined, yearn for a connection and meaning.”
- Ellen Prentiss Campbell, Washington Independent Review of Books