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Marta Maretich Bios
Short
In varied international career, Marta Maretich has been a teacher, a publisher, a journalist and a fiction writer. Her latest novel, The Merchants of Light (2015) tells the story of the Tiepolo family, the greatest painting dynasty of 18th century Venice. She is the author of two other books of fiction, The Possibility of Lions (GemmaMedia 2011) and The Bear Suit (upcoming in 2017). She was editor of The Berkeley Poetry Review and Whispering Campaign, a journal of the arts. Her short fiction, nonfiction and poetry have appeared in many publications and she has been awarded artist residencies at the Eastern Frontiers Educational Foundation at Norton Island and Yaddo. Born in Nigeria, raised in California, Marta has lived in London since 1995 and is married to the British painter Michael Alford.
Long
Marta Maretich is the is the author of thee novels: The Merchants of Light (Nine Elms Books 2015), The Possibility of Lions (GemmaMedia 2011) and The Bear Suit (upcoming in 2017). Her short fiction, nonfiction and poetry have appeared in many publications including Boom! A Journal of California, The Harvard Review and The Jacaranda Review. She was the editor of The Berkeley Poetry Review and Whispering Campaign, an arts journal. She has been awarded artist residencies at the Eastern Frontiers Educational Foundation at Norton Island and Yaddo.
Marta was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria and left in 1967 with the outbreak of the Biafran Civil War. She grew up in Bakersfield, California. Her mother was primary school teacher and her father was an oilman. She attended the University of California at Berkeley where she graduated with an honors degree in Comparative Literature.
After graduation, she traveled extensively and worked as an English teacher in Spain, Taiwan and south-central Los Angeles before taking a job in publishing with the professional publisher Jossey-Bass. While there, she helped develop the first-ever imprint dedicated to the nonprofit sector. At the same time she completed an MFA in fiction from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. Both experiences went on to shape her professional and creative careers for the rest of her life.
In parallel with her creative career, Marta has written and edited numerous publications for and about the nonprofit sector with an emphasis on organizational development, leadership and governance. She currently blogs about social investment and tracks the evolution of innovative approaches to funding social and environmental good. On her own time, she is a literacy advocate and her first novel, The Possibility of Lions, was chosen as recommended reading by ProLiteracy, America’s largest literacy organization.
Marta has lived in London since 1995. Her husband, Michael Alford, is a British painter. They have one daughter.
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