Marguerite Lawrence is a retired music teacher having taught elementary general and orchestra for 32 years. Her career was spent writing children’s cross-curriculum music for her students primarily in the forms of ecological and historical themes. When she retired 9 years ago, Marguerite took to writing fiction. She belongs to a writing group, has attended several writing workshops, and has published four short stories:

Last Chapter, publ. 2020, Writers in the Attic Anthology, Idaho’s Log Cabin Literary Center, Boise, ID

Hey Good Lookin’, publ. 2018, Writers in the Attic Anthology, Idaho’s Log Cabin Literary Center, Boise, ID

Jersey, publ. 2015, Writers in the Attic Anthology, Idaho’s Log Cabin Literary Center, Boise, ID

Farmer’s Wife, publ. 2014, Boise Weekly Magazine, Boise, ID

As a music teacher, Marguerite was awarded a semester sabbatical through the Boise School District in order to write a children’s musical about Mother Earth and was later granted a leave of absence for two years to teach music in Almaty, Kazakhstan. She has published one Christmas musical and a collection of songs about ecology and preservation of water.

She was awarded a writing fellowship with the National Writing Project and was a recipient of an Idaho Governor’s Award for Excellence in Education. Most recently, Marguerite was awarded a Boise City Mayor’s Award for Excellence in Arts Education.

She enjoys reading magical realism and finds it challenging and fun to write stories based in this genre. Her focus for this residency is to work on a long-range project that may or may not become a novel – about an old woman from Kazakhstan who is visited by a nomad, who converses with her about reincarnation.

Marguerite’s father’s family immigrated to the US from the former Yugoslavia. She has visited Croatia several times through the years and is excited to visit Serbia for the first time. Whenever Marguerite is in this part of the world she feels at home and at peace – a good combination for creating and nurturing stories.

Email address: dot110254@gmail.com