To read older poems and essays from The Monitor, go
here. Type
Marla Kay Houghteling in the search box at the top of the page.
You can find Marla Kay’s short story “Ma Kamanda’s Latrine,” which involves a Peace Corps Volunteer in West Africa, in the anthology
Living on the Edge: fiction by Peace Corps Writers, published by Curbstone Press.
Marla Kay wrote an article for the
Muskegon Chronicle about her experience in the Peace Corps. You can read that
here.
The Road to Pelican
In 1998 Marla Kay and her husband, married for just six months, took to the road in her
Toyota to retrace her great-grandmother’s 1871 trip by prairie schooner. Sarah Moore Leonard Cole, her husband, their baby and two other
wagons of Coles set out from central Wisconsin to the “promised land” of western Minnesota, settling in what is now Pelican Rapids. Sarah’s
own account of the six-week journey served as a “verbal map” 127 years later.
Read a sample chapter from
The Road to Pelican, a
book about these parallel journeys,
here.
Starrvation Corner
Evander L. Cole, Marla Kay’s great uncle, headed for the Klondike in 1898. His written account and
photographs sparked the idea for a novel.
Here, you can read a sample chapter from
Starrvation Corner, the story of Aurora and Martin Starr, whose lives are turned upside down by the
Klondike Gold Rush.
