“The character Ada grew out of my walks around my neighborhood in Charlotte,” says Paula. “It used to be a cotton mill community, and there are still many of the old mill houses and residents. One day, I saw an older woman who seemed very guarded, and I wondered what her story was. And before I knew it, the story of Ada Shook and her partner, Cam Lively, was unfolding.”
Paula is the author of three published novels – the Lammy-winning Out of Time (1990; 2012 Bywater e-book), the Lammy-nominated Home Movies (1993), and Chicken (1997; 2001 reprint); and a short story collection, Voyages Out (1989), written with Carla Tomaso. Paula’s short story “Comfort Zone,” which is part of The Ada Decades, appeared in the Spring 2016 issue of The Raleigh Review.
Paula’s other publications include three nonfiction books – notably, The Queerest Places: A National Guide to Gay and Lesbian Historic Sites (1997) – and numerous articles, essays and short stories on LGBT themes. She wrote the biweekly column “Lesbian Notions” on LGBT politics and culture from 1997 to 2005, and it was syndicated in the LBGT press.
Also a playwright, Paula’s plays have had productions with Pittsburgh Playwrights Theater Company, Manhattan Theatre Source, the Pittsburgh New Works Festival, the Ganymede Festival, No Name Players, and others. Her full-length screenplay, Foreign Affairs, about the love affair between American journalist Dorothy Thompson and German novelist Christa Winsloe, finished second place in the 2003 POWER UP screenwriting contest.
Originally from Pittsburgh, Paula spent most of her adult life in New York City before boomeranging back to Pittsburgh for eleven years. In 2014, she and her wife, writer and professor Katie Hogan, moved to North Carolina, where Paula teaches creative writing to undergraduates at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She is at work on a fifth novel, set in New York City in 1983. For more information on Paula Martinac, and her writing, visit her at www.paulamartinac.com.
