Bio

About Me

Elizabeth Marquis Mayorca is a memoirist, poet, playwright, and musician who is also a violin and viola instructor for the Mayorca Music Studio. She received an MFA in Creative Nonfiction and Poetry from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and a BFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU where she received the Rod Marriot Playwriting Award.

She has taught playwriting, poetry, and creative nonfiction. She has also studied music since she was a child and has been teaching violin for sixteen years.

Her first love (genre) was poetry and her main interest for the past several years has been memoir. Her particular interest is in helping others to understand their family members/ancestors through writing memoir. Through teaching she learns more about her own writing.

After her uncle passed away in 1999, she published his poetry A Sea of Images to show how his mind evolved after returning from the Vietnam War, and in an attempt to keep his memory alive. After that, her sister (who is an artist) and she published a book Sister Symmetry; for every painting she created there is a poem, for every poem, a painting.

Teaching helps her towards writing a book about her relationship with her grandmother (to keep her alive as well). This book also explores the expectations of motherhood in her family. Her grandmother lost her mother at age two and as a mother herself, she gave birth to a stillborn child (her fifth child). This altered her ability to be emotionally present for Elizabeth’s mother. Through writing she hopes to bring awareness to the tendency of the mothers (of her family) to sacrifice for their children, then blame them for their losses. A martyrdom, victimhood glory legacy, which is unhealthy. Through writing she wishes to change the dynamics of her own mothering. That is her goal! 

She has had the honor of being mentored by Amy Suardi, Wendy Dale, Paul Selig, Gary Garrison, John Walch, Harrison Calendaria Fletcher, Jacquelyn Mitchard, Robert Vivian, Richard Jackson, Betsy Sholl, and participated in workshops with Sue William Silverman, Patrick Madden, and Cynthia Huntington. She is grateful for their guidance and expertise. She hopes to pass on their hard-earned wisdom.​

She is currently sending out two poetry manuscripts and writing a memoir about her New York born, Calabrese grandmother’s life.

Please contact her @ElizabethMayorc on Twitter or elizabethmmayorca@gmail.com

Some of her favorite books are Song Poet by Kao Kalia Yang, The Color of Water by James McBride, Half-Broke Horses by Jeanette Walls, Bring Down the Little Birds: On Mothering, Art, Work, and Everything Else by Carmen Gimenez Smith, the poetry of Walter John Hawver, Tarfia Faizullah, Natasha Tretheway, Mary Oliver, Terrance Hayes, Charles Simic, Naomi Shihab Nye, Tracey K. Smith, Vivee Francis, Jane Hirshfield and many others.