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Phoebe Wray

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Phoebe Wray

Phoebe Wray Phoebe Wray currently lives in Ayers, Massachusetts.

“I’ve been writing since I could write, and was telling stories before then, much encouraged by my family. My early dream was to be a newspaper reporter, especially a foreign correspondent. I started to pursue that but instead ran away with the circus, so to speak, and became a stand-up comic. From there I went into the theatre, studying and working, eventually also writing plays and songs and directing. But I didn’t stop writing. I had poems published, did theatre reviews, and have always kept a journal.

I started making up stories before I could actually write, encouraged by my family, especially my Dad, who was a great story-teller. My nick-name was “Phoebe the Fibber,” not because I told lies, but because I would make up a story on demand. Adults indulged me shamelessly, I’m afraid, but it only made me eager to learn to write and read. My first poem was published in the local weekly newspaper of my small hometown when I was nine. It was dreadful doggerel but had perfect rhymes. I was the editor of our class newspaper in the 5th grade.

My ambition was to be a journalist, especially a foreign correspondent. That had a romantic, exciting allure, and I went slinking around in a trench coat. I majored in journalism at Santa Rosa (California) High School, was editor of the school newspaper in 11th and 12th grades, and worked as a reporter and music critic for the daily Santa Rosa Press Democrat. I also served briefly as Assistant Editor of The Montgomery Village News.

Then I ran away with the circus, so to speak, and became a stand-up comic in the avant-garde cabaret clubs of San Francisco. I had always harbored a secret desire to be an actress—well, what else is a story-teller?—and finally wrote my own comic material and started a long career  in the theatre. I quickly moved from clubs to the stage, settled down to serious study of the art, and eventually made it to New York City. I had a nice career for a dozen years, mostly Off-Off-Broadway (the avant-garde, again!), Off-Broadway, cabaret revues, summer stock, and regional theatre.

But I never gave up writing. I supported my theatre habit by writing travel brochures for travel agencies and airlines, promotional copy, song lyrics, an occasional scholarly essay for journals such as Modern Drama, poetry (in Cat’s Magazine, Quartet), and, of course, plays, some of which were done in NYC, Boston, London and, I think, elsewhere.

I switched gears again, left New York for Boston, and founded a non-profit international environmental education group and started writing teaching materials and public information on endangered species (especially the neglected ones like bats, manatees, and the unarmored three-spine stickleback), and marine mammals. I was an advocate as well, and three times served on the official United States delegation to the International Whaling Commission, the treaty organization that meets annually to divvy up what’s left of the whales, not always a happy time. I wrote white papers, teaching kits, articles, fact sheets.

I’m still writing for the environment, most recently an essay on people’s involvement with dolphins for The Encyclopedia of Nature and Religion, but spend my “other” time teaching in the Theatre Division of The Boston Conservatory. I had always promised myself that “some day” I would get around to writing fiction. And so I have.

The other stuff: I was born in Franklin, Pennsylvania and raised in near-by Cochranton (a “Brigadoon” kind of village of a 1000 souls), then went to Santa Rosa, California, with my parents for high school. I lived in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City before settling in the Boston area. I live in Ayer, Massachusetts, in an 1860 farmhouse with my three cats, Max, Mouse and Jenny.”

— Phoebe Wray

 

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EDGE books by Phoebe Wray:

1. JEMMA 7729 / Phoebe Wray.
       -Calgary : Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing, 2008.

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