Hillary: What is the most magical/terrifying place you’ve visited?
Marge: For me, this is a three-part question: the most magical, flying into sunset or sunrise clouds or canoeing in a swamp; the most terrifying, standing on a rock above a mountain valley or underwater – even a diver’s video of the life below the ocean’s surface frightens me with its terrifying beauty.
Hillary: How does place generally fit into your writing?
Marge: I draw from memories and impressions. I wrote the Rhysling winning poem, “General Tecumseh Sherman’s Ghosts” from memories of spirits, imagined or real, while exploring the Florida wilderness.
Hillary: What is one place that is top of your to-go list and why?
Marge: Places I’ve set my short stories and poems are many and various. I’ve been to deserts, oceans, forests and traveled through skies of all sorts. But I haven’t walked the Moors of England, or heard firsthand the many Irish legends, nor caught the ghostly echoes of bagpipes in the Scotland highlands. Imaginings of the latter are in a poem from my Elgin award winner, WAR collection with Alessandro Manzetti, “Culloden”, but that is not enough. Take me to those isles for inspirations, please!
Marge Simon lives in Ocala, FL, City of Trees with her husband, poet/writer Bruce Boston and the ghosts of two cats. She edits a column for the HWA Newsletter, Blood & Spades: Poets of the Dark Side. Marge’s works have appeared in Pedestal Magazine, Asimov’s, Crannog, Silver Blade, New Myths, Daily Science Fiction. She attends the ICFA annually as a guest poet/writer and is on the board of the Speculative Literary Foundation. A multiple Bram Stoker award winner, Marge is the second woman to be acknowledged by the SF &F Poetry Association with a Grand Master Award. www.margesimon.com.
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Hillary Dodge 
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