Micah Perks is an American fiction writer and memoirist. Both of her first two books, We Are Gathered Here (St. Martin's Press

St. Martin's Press

St. Martin's Press is a book publisher headquartered in the Flatiron Building in New York City. Currently, St. Martin's Press is one of the United States' largest publishers, bringing to the public some 700 titles a year under eight imprints, which include St. Martin's Press , St...

 1997) and Pagan Time (Counterpoint Press 2001) examine the utopian impulse in U.S. history.

Biography

Micah Perks grew up on a commune in the Adirondack Mountains

Adirondack Mountains

The Adirondack Mountains are a mountain range located in the northeastern part of New York, that runs through Clinton, Essex, Franklin, Fulton, Hamilton, Herkimer, Lewis, Saint Lawrence, Saratoga, Warren, and Washington counties....

. She later went to high school in Middlebury, Vermont, and received her BA and MFA from Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

. She is a 2008 recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts

National Endowment for the Arts

The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...

 Literary Fellowship Grant, two Pushcart Prize

Pushcart Prize

The Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize by Pushcart Press that honors the best "poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot" published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors are invited to nominate up to 6 works they have featured....

 nominations and has been a resident of the Blue Mountain Center several times. She has taught at Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

, Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Hobart and William Smith Colleges, located in Geneva, New York, are together a liberal arts college offering Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science and Master of Arts in Teaching degrees. In athletics, however, the two schools compete with separate teams, known as the Hobart Statesmen and the...

 and University of California, Santa Cruz

University of California, Santa Cruz

The University of California, Santa Cruz, also known as UC Santa Cruz or UCSC, is a public, collegiate university; one of ten campuses in the University of California...

, where she is an Associate Professor of Literature, Co-Director of The Creative Writing Program and Co-Provost of Kresge College

Kresge College

Kresge College is one of the residential colleges that make up the University of California, Santa Cruz. Founded in 1971, Kresge is located on the western edge of the UCSC campus. Kresge is the sixth of ten colleges at UCSC, and originally one of the most experimental. The first provost of Kresge,...

, with her partner, Latin American/Latino critic Juan Poblete. They live in Santa Cruz, California

Santa Cruz, California

Santa Cruz is the county seat and largest city of Santa Cruz County, California in the US. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, Santa Cruz had a total population of 59,946...

 with their four children.

Novel

We Are Gathered Here (St. Martin's 1997) is set in the 1880s. Regina Sartwell, a wealthy young woman with epilepsy, and Olive Honsinger, her maid, join in friendship and a fierce desire to escape Victorian conventions. As Perks describes in "Escaping the Ending," this novel is based on her great, great aunt Regina, who was imprisoned in her home because she had epilepsy. She jumped from her third floor window three times before she succeeded in killing herself. Perks writes: "I wanted to reach back in time and find another way out for her." In the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Feb. 18, 1996, Erin J. Aubry writes "We are Gathered Here is nothing short of a woman's manifesto. It addresses an astonishing array of issues--independence, marriage, work, female companionship, goddess worship, pregnancy, abortion, emotional repression, sexual abuse--all in a tightly woven story that is as fanciful as it is grimly real...This is a book that reaches across more than 100 years of difference between its time and ours to affirm an eternal human need for love, with not a whit of energy lost in the translation."

Memoir

Pagan Time (Counterpoint hardcover 2001, paperback forthcoming November, 2009) is a memoir about Perks' childhood growing up in an experimental commune school in the Adirondack Mountains during the sixties and early seventies. "This wonderful book has distilled the sixties into a rare and potent tincture. It is bittersweet, dangerous, full of mad enthusiasms, wild adventures, sexual excess, and genuine tragedy. Micah Perks never loses her perfect pitch...I could not put it down and cannot forget it." Peter Coyote

Peter Coyote

Peter Coyote is an American actor, author, director, screenwriter and narrator of films, theatre, television and audio books. His voice work includes narrating the opening ceremony of the 2002 Winter Olympics and Apple's iPad campaign. He has also served as on-camera co-host of the 2000 Oscar...

Short stories

• "What The Thin Ones Eat", VIZ Inter-Arts: A Trans-Genre anthology, 2007, pp. 171.
• "We Are The Same People", The Best Underground Fiction, anthology, Stolen Time Publishing, 2006, pp. 106–130.
• "Dear Lucille", Columbia, Spring 2004, p. 62-72.
• "Quiero Bailar Slow With You Tonight", ZZYZZYVA, Spring 2004, pp. 155–165.
• "We Are the Same People", Massachusetts Review, Spring 2004. pp. 120–132.
• "Breathing Room", Epoch, Summer 2001, pp. 108–110.
• "Younger Men", River City, Summer 2000, pp. 16–24.
• "Letters: Real and Sent", Red Wheelbarrow, Spring 1999, pp. 44–50.
• "Anyone Is Possible, Anyone Is Possible (anthology), Red Hen Press, January 1997, pp. 217-224.
• "Wild Things", The Book Press, February 1997, pp. 6–7.
• "Anyone Is Possible", Louisville Review, Awards Issue, Fall 1996, pp. 122–130.
• "With Chickens Watching", Southwest Review, Spring 1994, pp. 366–373.
• "Honey", American Voice, Summer 1992, pp. 5–12.
• "My Family with Black Flies", Blueline, Summer 1992, pp. 21–26.
• "Natural Accidents", The Alaska Review, Spring 1990, pp. 51–58.
• "Ledgerbirds", Primavera, Fall 1989, pp. 64–72.
• "The Hummingbird", Epoch, Winter 1988, pp. 103–107.

External links

• University of California at Santa Cruz Creative Writing Program
• NEA Writer's Corner
• Red Room writer profile