The backstory of Under Magnolia

Here is a bit of the backstory about the writing of Under Magnolia. Some of you might know that before Frances wrote her first book of nonfiction, Under the Tuscan Sun, she had published six books of poetry and a poetry textbook. She was a professor at San Francisco State University, as well as Chair of the largest Creative Writing program in the country.  She was also starting to write essays about her childhood and was publishing them in some of the major literary magazines in the USA.

But then one day, certain family members objected to what she was writing—too personal, revealing, etc.—and she stopped, put her essays in a drawer, and took a break from writing prose. 

But not for long! A few years later she started writing more essays, but not about her childhood in South Georgia. One of the essays began this way: “I am about to buy a house in a foreign country.” She published them in a variety of magazines and newspapers and soon had a manuscript, which she called Under the Tuscan Sun.

So perhaps the family members did her a bit of a favor. 

And much later, she took another look at her essays about growing up, edited them, wrote a stack of new ones, and in 2014, Under Magnolia was published to great acclaim. 

“Under Magnolia is one of the most brilliant memoirs ever written, shedding new light on a certain mysterious South and offering  a memorable portrait of the artist as a young girl. Frances Mayes, a petite, brainy beauty from what we used to call politely ‘a troubled home’ has written an unnervingly honest and refreshingly open account of how a child can be neglected even amid privilege and a large family. Reader, artist, scholar, poet—Frances Mayes gradually became the aesthete and writer she is today, a passionate lover of the world and the word.” 
–Lee Smith, author of Guests on Earth

You can follow Frances at francesmayes.substack.com.