Episode 512: Mary Margaret Alvarado Likes Her Drafts Ice Cold

"A certain sort of dogged obsessiveness seems to help. I remember hearing Tobias Wolfe speak once that talent is wonderful  and widely distributed on Earth, but sitting down and putting in the hours is where it's at," says Mary Margaret Alvarado, who wrote "That's Somebody's Son" for The Atavist.

It’s a little later than planned, but here we feature Mary Margaret Alvarado’s piece for The Atavist Magazine titled “That’s Somebody’s Son: Three Mothers, One Struggle: saving their children with schizophrenia.” It’s a piece that that Mia, as Mary Margaret goes by, pitched more than a year ago and it was rejected. But Mia went back to the drawing board, basically wrote the entire thing, came back, and boom here we are.

We’re going to hear from Seyward Darby about her side of the table and why this piece was at first rejected and that special feeling when a great pitch comes across the transom.

Mary Margaret Alvarado is a multi-faceted writer with her poetry and nonfiction appearing in The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, VQR, Outside, and The Georgia Review, among other publications. She is the author of the poetry collection Hey Folly and the nonfiction book American Weather. She lives in Colorado.

In our chat we talk about:

• Dogged obsessiveness
• Cold drafts
• Ambition
• Trust
• Reimagining the MFA
• And stocking produce

Promotional support: The 2026 Power of Narrative Conference. Use narrative20 at checkout for 20% off your tuition. Visit combeyond.bu.edu.

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Show notes: brendanomeara.com