“Writer” is harder to define, largely because the term does little to pin down the genre or style of the work. Many writers learn to specialize, and thus we have journalists, novelists, short story writers, non-fiction writers, screenwriters, and playwrights. Mark apparently missed the class suggesting these helpful divisions, and so he continues to try his hand at all of those forms, along with poetry, epistolary ruminations, and––thanks to modern technology––the dreaded blog.
Before becoming an at-home father, Mark worked as a zookeeper, a sound recordist, and as the technical director for a college theater. For several years, he made his living as a retail trainer for Borders Books and Music, where he assisted with store openings across the country, reasoning that while endless chain stores may be undesirable, no nation can ever have too many bookshops. In his spare time, he has been known to hike, teach college-level English and creative writing classes, and play with his children.
Mark Rigney is a writer and a stay-at-home father living and working in Evansville, Indiana. The second part of that equation is the easier of the two to explain: He has two sons, currently ages seven and three, respectively, and he is happily married to a wonderful woman with whom he shares the house, the boys, and far more meals than any married couple has a right to expect.
A complete curriculum vitae is available via the link below. Highlights (of the written work, though not the parenting) might be summed up as follows:
Mark Rigney is the author of Deaf Side Story: Deaf Sharks, Hearing Jets and a Classic American Musical (Gallaudet University Press, 2003). His short fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in venues such as The Bellevue Literary Review, Black Gate, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Shadow Regions, The Red Rock Review, Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine, All Hallows, and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. Other writing projects have placed second in nationwide novel contests and have earned grants from the Indiana Arts Council and the Vogelstein Foundation. His plays for the stage have won national contests and been performed in seven states, including New York and California. Acts of God, his first published play, is available now from Playscripts, Inc., and has several upcoming productions scheduled around the country––and in Canada. Recent parenting articles have appeared in the magazines Columbus Parent and Evansville Parent. Watch for his first “theatrical podcast” in early 2009 through the Audacity Theatre Lab of Austin, Texas.
Photo courtesy of www.erikphotographic.com
