Out of Nowhere

Mary Ann Taylor-Hall began writing poetry at the age of ten. Her father sent one of her poems to The Saturday Evening Post, which rejected it with a gentle note. She began writing fiction at the University of Florida, where she studied under Andrew Lytle, and has considered herself a fiction writer for most of her writing life. She has published two novels: Come and Go, Molly Snow and At The Breakers, and a collection of stories, How She Knows What She Knows About Yo-Yos. Her short fiction has been published in The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Shenandoah, The Sewanee Review, and other literary quarterlies, and has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories. In the past ten years, she has returned to poetry and her poems have been published in two handset letterpress limited editions, Dividing Ridge and Joy Dogs. Born in Chicago, Taylor-Hall moved with her family to Central Florida when she was seven. After receiving her MA from Columbia University, she spent two migratory decades before settling on a farm in Harrison County, Kentucky, with, until his death several years ago, her husband, the poet James Baker Hall.