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Mara Bateman

Author

Mara's "lyrical and evocative" storytelling sweeps you away into worlds rich with sensory experience, humor, high adventure and imperfect heros who steal your heart. 

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ABOUT MARA

Mara has been playing pretend for as long as she can remember. Writing stories was just the natural evolution. 
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Mara writes speculative fiction, fantasy and poetry. Her work explores the joys and discomforts of humanhood and the sacred minutiae of the natural world.
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Mara lives in Boise, Idaho where she works professionally as an acupuncturist at a local nonprofit clinic and writes whenever she can. Her short fiction and poetry has appeared in several publications, and she is the creator of This Poem Is For You: Horoscopic Poetry by an Unlicensed Bystander, a weekly poetry newsletter. 
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When she isn't writing or poking people with tiny needles for their own good, she can be found on a river, up a mountain, or curled up with her two beloved cats and an art project.
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PROJECTS

Mara's "lyrical and evocative" storytelling sweeps you away into worlds rich with sensory experience, humor, high adventure and imperfect heros who steal your heart. 

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THE RIVER ONLY ASKS FOR ONE THING

Adult Fantasy - Querying

In a world of desolation, a single oasis of life is protected by a god-like river, hungry for human life. A young woman goes against tradition to rescue her lover from her fate as a sacrifice to the river, only to discover that everything she believes about her home may be a lie.

BLOOD IS BITTER WATER

Adult Fantasy - Drafting

In this follow up to THE RIVER ONLY ASK FOR ONE THING Dorian seems to destroy everything she touches. Redemption comes in the form of a dangerous new friend with secrets of his own and a quest that will lead her into the wilderness, both beyond the walls of her homeland and in her own heart.

THE SKY IS FULL OF MICHAEL

Adult Fantasy - Drafting

A lonesome woman befriends a monster and is drawn into a secret world of warring magicians where she must decide how far she is really willing to go for love.

PUBLISHED WORK

Light-hearted melt-in-your-mouth prose explore the joys and discomforts of humanhood and the sacred minutiae of the natural world.

ORPHEUS

Paper Plane Press, Volume 2

Short Fiction

Before you came along I lived like a coyote, yipping at the moon, in love with the bare-breasted hills. 

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KING OF KNOTS

Writers in the Attic Anthology, 2025

Poetry

My dad

named for a tree &

temperament likewise

has tried a thousand times

to teach me to tie a bowline knot.

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FOR TERRITORIAL ANIMALS

This Poem is for You

Poetry

Do you wanna have some fun? you ask

while brushing out your hair with teasel heads.

Berry cheeks, you say Let’s kiss out in the cold

among the dead red apples.

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FREE AS A WORM

1st Prize, 2026 Stonecrop Treefort Microfiction Contest

Micro Fiction

Louisa’s bedroom window is made from three-inch-thick Plexiglass. Outside the window is dirt and in the dirt is a worm.

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LULLABY FOR DARK WOODS

Ekphrasis, 2024

Death Rattle Literary

Poetry

I slept in an old greenhouse,

phantoms of small snakes in the walls,

ghost of a leaning prickly pear over the bed.

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REVENGE OF THE HALIBUT

Paper Place Press, Volume 3

Micro Fiction

     “Halibut can weigh up to one hundred and fifty pounds, you know,” my dad says. We are eating halibut, breaded and fried, with chips. We are sitting on our raincoats, Hwy 101 rushing by, our fingers tartar-y, the sky sealed over with gray.

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Contact

CONNECT WITH MARA

I'd love to hear from you! 

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