Alum Marianne Gage Draws on Career as Artist to Pen Newest Novel

EAST BAY TIMES -- Private Faces is mostly set in California — Gage’s home since 1952 — in Big Sur, the Gold Country and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art setting the stage for the novel.

While most of her life was spent painting pastel portraits and creating monotypes, Gage set visual art aside in favor of another form of art — creative writing. Even while she was painting and printmaking, continuing her studies at San Francisco State and Cal State Hayward, teaching at Oakland schools and at Liberty High School in Brentwood, she took writing courses years ago when she considered writing a novel about growing up in the Dust Bowl.