The Short Version—
The author Stephen Burke grew up in Boston, MA. While pursuing an MFA in creative writing at Columbia University, he looked back to his early years in developing The Chieftains of South Boston. It’s a tale of three Mahoney brothers, and explores sense of place and how it can shape a person’s destiny.
In 2021, Stephen published The Mahoneys of West Seattle. Set in Seattle and Alaska, it’s a sequel that follows the lives of Matthew Mahoney, Anne Boushay and their two children. In 2022, he moved to Ipswich, MA, to reacquaint himself with the area and to volunteer on a farm. That experience informs his third novel, now in a finished first draft. Stephen Burke currently lives in Sandpoint, ID, where he’s researching a new fiction project.
A Longer Take—
I didn’t grow up wanting to be a writer or an author. Even during my undergraduate years at Colby College, I had no idea that my life would take a creative turn at some later point. What I wanted to do with my life was the same as what a lot of other people from places like Dorchester wanted to do—be successful in one business or another, and never look back at the world where I grew up.
After graduation, I spent a few years at Fortune 500 companies. It was enough time to realize I was on the wrong road.
As I was trying to figure out where the right road was, I started reading a lot of books, including novels. Jumping from one writer to the next, I saw how they used their experiences to testify about the human existence. They sorted through the bones of life and built mirrors of beauty that were sometimes very painful but, if written honestly, also full of truth.
The idea of creating new worlds out of experiences, memories and imagination was powerful. I didn’t have to leave behind the world in which I grew up. I didn’t have to cancel that part of my life. Instead, I could use it as paint on a canvas to show what it was like to grow up in a particular place at a particular time. And I had so much material to mine.
We all need stories in our lives. Some of us find purpose in being the storytellers. To do that successfully, we have to learn. My hope was to learn fast. It’s taken me many years.
My life as a writer began with journaling and reading everything from fiction to philosophy, doing so in a way I had never done while in school. The journaling helped me figure out exactly who I was, which I had to do first. That opened the door to writing fiction. In those years, I earned a living in some interesting ways—working construction, waiting tables, driving a cab, residential and industrial roofing, even spending one season as a chimney sweep.
After working as a roofer in my twenties, I returned to it in my fiction with the character Matthew Mahoney, who’s a foreman of a roofing crew.
With the fiction, I struggled alone for a while. Then I started a writing group with several other rookies. We helped each other make baby steps, and occasionally small leaps in our work.
Excerpt from a short story titled “Our Waiter, Who Art in Hiding”
Eventually, I moved to Seattle. I made the city my new home and started writing groups there. A couple of years later, when I found myself plateauing, someone suggested an MFA program. Absolutely not, I said. I did not need academia. I was not that kind of a writer. A year later I was just as stuck, so I asked people where I should apply.
I went to NYC for a few years to attend an MFA program that challenged me. My writing improved. After graduating, I moved back to Seattle and began balancing my creative writing with copywriting on various marketing teams. In 2018, I made the leap to writing fiction full-time.
First two pages of a short story tilted “Make Me Smile”
In 2021, I self-published my second novel, The Mahoneys of West Seattle. Right after, I began work on a third book. It’s set mainly in Ipswich, MA, and includes the world of regenerative agriculture. In 2022, I moved to Cape Ann, and did some volunteering on a small farm to get hands-on experience. I’d lived in the area (Gloucester and Hamilton) for several years before moving west, so it was also a chance to reacquaint myself with the different communities on the North Shore. In March, 2024, I finished a first draft.
I currently live in Sandpoint, ID, where I’m researching my next fiction project.
www.LinkedIn.com/in/WriterBurke
Contact Email: MahoneysWS at gmail.com
Photo Credits
(both cropped)
“Bahia Honda State Park Milky Way” by Viktorwills, CC-BY-SA-4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Roofing photo by Springtree Restoration