Eileen
St. Lauren is an award winning Photo Journalist, News, Feature Writer from Petal, Mississippi, with over 80 publications.
She lives outside of Boston, Massachusetts, near the mouth of Cape Cod in a golden neighborhood where 100+ years ago Henry
David Thoreau and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow planted the trees and composed.
St. Lauren is a Southern literary writer in the tradition of--Reynolds Price, Flannery O'Connor, William Faulkner, Eudora
Welty, and Willie Morris.
Her beautiful voice makes her an excellent reader of her own work.
St. Lauren
is an honor graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. While in Nebraska, she was a Commentator on Nebraska Public
Radio Network. She was a three-year student of the now-late distinguished poet and writer, Charles Edward Eaton, University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and her favorite poet is mentor-friend, and former Poet Laureate of the United States, Richard
Wilbur.
"The Antigonish Review" published her first short story, "MOZELLA." St. Lauren is a member of the Academy of American Poets.
Charles Edward Eaton writes of St. Lauren's fiction, "Practically the Daughter of Faulkner...the Dickens of American
literature. Her work is characterized by brilliance of expression, vivacity, wit, and, a rare quality these days, compassion.
I believe she is in the line of the great Southern writers, Faulkner, Welty, etc."
Richard Wilbur
writes, "An Heiress of Eudora Welty...I have found her fiction sprightly, original, comic, and rather wild in a Southern romantic
vein."
"May
you be in the presence of angels and out of the reach of the Enemy."
"Glory, Ananias," a fiction excerpt from the unpublished novel, "The Adventures of Myra Boone," book two, "My Neighbors: Blue
Roses," can be read in the spring 2007 issue of a New York City on-line literary magazine by clicking on this link
Roger Jellinek former New York Times Deputy Book Reviewer, Times Books
Editor-in-Chief, organizer of the Maui Writer's Conference and owner of Hawaii's only literary agency wrote: “Eileen
St. Lauren is an author as passionately committed to her writing and her writer’s vision as anyone we have come across.
She is deeply rooted in her Southern literary tradition. Yet her imagination is original and nothing if not fertile and prolific.
She cannot not be a writer. Eileen surely has a firm future as a professional writer.”
And Anne Tyler wrote in a letter to St. Lauren of her first published
short story and NPR reading, "Pure and original. A natural born writer. Have you ever considered becomming an Actress?"
A National Public Radio
affiliate in Boston has agreed to consider her State, Nation, and World News-based Commentaries for airing when
the muse hits.
Currently, St. Lauren is composing a romantic comedy set near the mouth of Cape Cod
in Plymouth, MA, entitled, Everybody In Town.
~
The Novels
~ Adult and Young Adult ~ The following literary works of fiction were recently completed with literary
representation currently being sought.
Goodlife, Mississippi ~
October 31, 1956, in a remote area of Jackson
County near the George County
line in Mississippi, nine-year-old Mary “Myra”
Boone finds herself at the Salem Camp Meeting a Holy Ghost healing service. It is there that she begins her journey into the
spirit world—a world that can only be seen with the eyes of the heart. Through inexplicable spiritualism, Myra
hears voices, sees spirits and souls outside herself where the supernatural power of God, the Devil, and their angels exist.
Myra’s
story is character-driven rather than plot-driven. It is a story of psychological development and internalization of events—rather
than a story of the events themselves. However, the plot will ultimately reveal itself and leave a lasting life impact through
the comical and downtrodden voices of its simple yet profound characters.
My Neighbors ~
Neighborly, but solitary and often hilariously sad, voices of people
whom sixteen-year-old Myra Boone lives among in Goodlife, Mississippi, after the tragic death of her family inspire the
young writer with their painful humor and heartfelt simplicity in My Neighbors: Blue Roses. The personalities
bare their souls, merging the mystical and the real in the towns of Soso, Goshen, Glossolalia, and Goodlife. The essence
of My Neighbors: Blue Roses is love, peace, provision, redemption, faith, glory, and death.
Novel-in-Progress
The Doghouse ~ Adult Fiction
The Doghouse is a dramatic comedy about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, ending with
a romantic twist. It is, as well, light reading, providing "comic relief" as it takes the readers through the internal experiences
of the wealthy Northeastern culture with its hilariously sad slice-of-life events and characters.
Through the fragility of a girl named Fleur, an old demented woman called Itty, and a not-so-perfect family bearing the
Berkowitz curse, readers learn that the most valuable weapon with which to fight the battle of love and life is a simple acknowledgement
that God pervades all of life and that all paths lead to God.
~ Eileen St. Lauren would like to thank God for smiling on her with His grace through
the longtime love, support, and patience of dear family, friends, and strangers who remain steadfast and true saying
daily prayers on her behalf until she gets that first break into the literary world.
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