Eugene Mirabelli

Eugene Mirabelli's new novel, The Goddess in Love with a Horse (And What Happened Next) will be out in July, 2008.

Eugene Mirabelli is the author of six novels, plus short stories, poems, many journalistic pieces and numerous book reviews. He admits to being at least 77 and with any luck he'll be older by the time you read this. Mirabelli taught in the graduate writing program at the State University of New York at Albany during its heyday, and currently contributes articles and reviews to an alternative newsweekly with a focus on arts and politics. This makes him the oldest writer on a journal run by young hotheads. A selection of his reviews and political opinion pieces can be found online at http://www.criticalpages.com. Mirabelli has received grants for his work, including a Rockefeller Grant, has been nominated for a couple of Pushcart Prizes and a Nebula Award, and his short fiction has been anthologized and published in Czech, Hebrew, Russian, Sicilian, and Turkish.

His years as a teacher have given him an abiding interest in education. Mirabelli is one of the founders and a former director of Alternative Literary Programs in the Schools (ALPS), and he served as its treasurer for over twenty years. ALPS, a non-profit corporation, was established to bring poets and writers to the schools of New York State to give creative writing workshops.

His first novel,The Burning Air, was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1959 - which, he admits, was a long time ago. This was followed by The Way In, (Viking), No Resting Place, (Viking), The World at Noon, (Guernica Editions of Canada), and a novella, The Language Nobody Speaks (Spring Harbor Press).

The Passion of Terri Heart, a novel of the sacred and the profane, was published in the fall of 2004. Maureen Teresa McFinn, a parochial school graduate, changes her name to Terri Heart when she escapes from Boston to New York City, where she becomes an actress in pornographic movies. Just as she is achieving a kind of shabby stardom, she becomes pregnant and disappears back to Boston. Solitary and in murderous desperation after the baby's birth, Terri has an ecstatic vision during a blinding snow squall. From that moment on she knows that her role in life is to love the loveless and shelter the homeless. This is the story of Terri Heart, porn actress and practitioner of what the Church calls the corporal works of mercy. This work has been praised by writers as diverse as Andrei Codrescu of National Public Radio, and Eugene C. Kennedy, the distinguished writer on Catholic affairs.

For information about The Passion of Terri Heart orThe Language Nobody Speaks and The World at Noon, click on the title links in the right-hand column. You'll be taken to a page with a cover photo of the book, and below the cover there's a paragraph about the book itself.