Mara Coson
Mara Coson
About
Mara Coson is a young writer from the Philippines. She has just completed her Masters in Creative Media (Creative Writing) at RMIT and is currently writing her first novella. She has been published in Voiceworks twice and is a contributor to the Philippine Daily Inquirer. She also writes short fiction and makes zines.
Mara Coson was isolated from other babies as a result of coming out before her mother reached the operating room. She was born blue. At seven, she tried to run away but couldn’t go past the gate of her house. That same year, she believed that the Holy Spirit told her to become a nun and experienced a crisis. At twelve, she wanted to be in a band famous for not wearing bras. She never learned how to play the guitar, but her long-haired guitar teacher told her a Sanskrit story that a man wanted to kill himself and chanted rama rama rama, until it became mara mara mara, meaning wisdom, and chose to live.
The young Filipino writer eventually picked up her bags and moved to Melbourne to study, where she had her hair chopped off and became a wordplay pun-dit, dashboard zinemaker and writer.