Artist Statement

I have a story to tell. It has taken me a long time to be ready to share it. When I started this process, I thought my story would make a good screenplay. It has both dramatic and comedic elements, and writing it as fiction gave me cover. But I wasn’t going deep and pulling out the gory stuff.

I had completed enough Feature Film Writing courses to be awarded a certificate. As part of the deal, I had an advisory meeting with a UCLA Creative Writing professor. In discussion with him, when I said I still wasn’t saying what I wanted to say, he steered me in the direction of memoir. So I started a creative writing course focusing on nonfiction and memoir.

Writing the story as memoir allows me to open myself to others and share the joy and heartbreak of a life fully lived. As a young person I explored the world and had adventures. As a mature person I struggled with life’s challenges — especially in my first marriage. Memoir is a perfect vehicle for this.

There is no end to the joy and challenges of life and we can learn from them. Musing about my life’s events has given me insight into my motivations and others’. In writing about them, I also hope to reach others who are slogging through the mud and yearning for relief. Yearning to be free. You are not alone. You are important. Do not fear telling your story.

I have now shared my story with friends and family. It is a humbling experience. “That was fascinating,” my sister-in-law said. I never knew all of that happened to you.” When a sister asked about it, I said, “It is revelatory.” Her eyes opened wide. “Revelatory?” I nodded.

So this is the grand reveal. I present to you Jane Kathy Rosso McMackin. Jane — the first name on my birth certificate. Kathy — The girl who took risks and enjoyed adventures. Rosso — my first married name, the “slogging through the mud” time. McMackin — happy times. It takes all of that to make a whole person.

I hope that what I present to  you in my writing will show you the whole person. I hope you will come to know and understand her. And yourself. And if you need a helping hand, look around. There may be one closer than you think.

Jane McMackin, memoirist, has written in multiple genres including poetry, journaling, screen and stage play scripts, and currently memoir.

Raised in the American midwest, she also lived in Korea as a child and traveled by ocean liner and VW camper bus throughout Asia and Europe. She lived and worked in France where she met her first husband in her early twenties.

BIO

With a career in graphic arts, Jane worked for several years as Director of Printing at the State of Minnesota. She ran her own company, True Marketing, for six years.

An enthusiast for community involvement, she has served on several professional and community boards in various towns. Elected to City Council in Isle of Palms, South Carolina in 2003, she served for four years.

Jane has completed two comprehensive certificate programs at UCLA: Feature Film Writing, Earned with Distinction and Creative Writing. She has a BA from Metropolitan University, MN.

Her published essays appeared in the compilation, Tuesdays with Tonya – Selections from the Work of Fourteen Lowcountry Memoir Writers.

She is married with a son and grandchildren.

A Bite of the Apple

Synopsis – May 2023

This memoir follows Jane Kathy (her childhood name) from an easy Midwest American upbringing through a surprising year of diverse foreign travel with her family — who almost left her at age ten in the far-away port of Singapore while sailing the seas on a French ocean liner — to return to the U.S. and the familiar world of high school dances and romantically-uneasy 1960’s American boys.

After a foreign exchange summer abroad, Kathy longs for the lure of France — the food, the language, the way they touch and kiss at every encounter. Back in her hometown for college, she meets a friend, Alice, who represents the essence of sixties counter-culture and who shares her desire for a more intense life experience.

The two girls hop a freighter for France, where they plan to find work and stay awhile. Through a stroke of luck, Kathy finds a position as an English teacher in the gritty seaport town of Marseille. The girls enjoy many adventures with the people they meet in eclectic French locales. Hitchhiking back to Marseille from Paris, they accept a ride in a little blue fiat driven by a forty-something, handsome Italian man. Kathy can’t get him out of her head.

She again goes home to America’s Midwest, the Italian follows, and the romantic life she had expected, instead becomes harrowing. The Italian, named Gee, is alternately loving and brutal. “You are my everything,” he tells her, but then he verbally abuses her with insults. She looks up to him because of his intellect and perceived wisdom, but when he feels threatened, he uses these words to control her. His words turn to violence. Torn between loving and fearing him, she doesn’t feel that she can turn to her family for help. She keeps her secret but plans for the day she can be free. With her son, she finally makes her escape.

Will he come after her? Will she make that same mistake again? Or has she finally found the strength and confidence to know true happiness?

This story explores what may happen when an easy, ordinary life becomes treacherous because of a choice we have made; because we take that bite out of the apple — the forbidden apple. Because we weren’t content to follow expectations laid out for us, even if — or because that would have been too easy. It is the story of a woman searching for and finding herself.