N.Y. Actress Puts Future in Writing

When Varley O’Connor joined UC Irvine’s nationally acclaimed graduate writing program in the fall of 1986, the New York actress had been writing short stories in her spare time for several years.

None of her stories had ever been published, however. “I didn’t even try,” she says. Writing was something she simply did for her own pleasure.

“I was just fortunate in that I didn’t know how good UCI was at the time,” said O’Connor, who now teaches an advanced fiction workshop at UCI. “I didn’t know much about writing. In my ignorance I was bold. Fortunately, it worked out well.”

Indeed, the novel she began writing in her first year at UCI and which served as her master’s thesis, is now in bookstores.

Set in New York City and the Long Island resort area of East Hampton, “Like China” (William Morrow; $19.95) is a touching tale about personal growth and dignity in the wake of domestic violence.

It’s the story of the relationship between Katha, a beautiful ex-model, and her abusive husband, Tommy, who has been drinking heavily since his trendy Manhattan nightspot mysteriously burned down, killing the cook and a waitress. The young couple have just moved into a rented beachfront summer home where Katha befriends Peter, the youngest of three motherless brothers whose fisherman father has abandoned them.

In describing the physically and emotionally isolated Katha, O’Connor writes that Katha feels “as if she had moved far away to a place where she couldn’t speak the language and everything was strange, to another country, like China maybe.”

The novel was inspired, in part, by the setting.

“New York City was still very much with me and it still is. It’s just the most important place to me,” said O’Connor, who moved to Manhattan after earning a bachelor’s degree in acting from Boston University in the ‘70s. (She won’t say precisely when. “I’m coy about my age.”)

While living in New York, O’Connor also spent several summers in the Hamptons, the upscale resort community on the southern tip of Long Island.

“I was fascinated with the difference between the local people--especially the fishing people--and these kinds of artsy people from the city,” said O’Connor, who researched battered wives by reading books on the subject and talking to experts. She said the abusive Tommy and the victimized Katha are composites of people she has known.

“I think this whole issue of abuse and cruelty and violence within relationships is a big problem in our society, and it’s something that I’m still trying to understand,” she said, adding that the powerlessness of women, “is something that I care very deeply about. I could identify with this situation, and I could feel what it would be like.”

Because of his youth, Peter, the young boy Katha befriends, is also powerless.

“I think as different as the two situations are, they are similar in that Katha is an adult woman, but she is so stripped of power, of self-esteem, I think she’s emotionally more similar to Peter--an 8-year-old child--than to adults,” said O’Connor.

Katha, she said, “is incredibly isolated and alone and she reaches out to this child because he’s not threatening, in a way. And this little boy needs something. It’s also interesting that she’d relate to a male child (given her husband’s abuse), but I think that’s hopeful in a way.”

O’Connor describes her decision to apply to the writing program at UCI as “instinct.”

“There were a lot of reasons I was dissatisfied with the theater world and its potential for the kind of expression I had in mind, and I was getting more and more excited about some of the new fiction I was reading,” she said. “One of the ways I kept sane in that crazy acting business was I just read and read, and so it must have gotten into my blood.”

Of the UCI writing program, O’Connor says: “On the whole it was very good for me. It kept me writing. There was competition in the best sense. I was inspired by having such gifted classmates and challenged, I think.”

She stayed in the two-year writing program an extra year to complete her novel and sold “Like China” in the spring of 1989, shortly after completing it.

Finding an agent was no problem. Her author-friend, former writing program member Michelle Latiolais, read her manuscript, liked it and sent it to her agent, Joy Harris, in New York. (Harris, who sold the novel in two weeks, also represents San Clemente author Jay Gummerman, another writing program alumnus.)

O’Connor, who is working on a new novel, still has a love-hate relationship with New York. She hasn’t ruled out one day moving back.

“It’s neat out here though,” said O’Connor, who has no immediate plans to write a novel set in Southern California. “I can’t write about here. It’s not in my bones yet. But it sure is interesting.”

O’Connor will read from her novel at 7 p.m. Friday at Dutton’s bookstore, 11975 San Vicente Blvd., Los Angeles.

Round Table: Edie Adams (“Sing a Pretty Song”), Jose Eber (“Beyond Hair: the Ultimate Makeover Book”), Tony Ulasewicz (“The President’s Private Eye”) and Stephanie Marston (“The Magic of Encouragement”) will speak at the Round Table West luncheon at noon today in the Balboa Bay Club, 1221 W. Coast Highway, Newport Beach. Cost: $30. Information: (213) 256-7977.

Book Signing: Fantasy author Stephen R. Donaldson (“The Real Story”) will sign from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday at Book Carnival, 870 N. Tustin Ave., Orange.

Romance Writers: Huntington Beach author Jina Bacarr (“Avenue of the Stars”) will discuss rewriting during the pre-meeting workshop of the Orange County chapter of Romance Writers of America at 10:30 a.m. Saturday at Fullerton Public Library, 353 W. Commonwealth Ave. Author Naomi Horton will discuss character motivation during the general meeting at 1 p.m. Cost: $3 for each session.

Factory Readings: Poets Thomas Rush and Tom Foster will read at 8 p.m. Monday at the Factory Readings at Casa Palma Restaurant, 122 E. 17th St., Santa Ana. Free.

Independent Writers: Cathy Lawhon Feldman, an Orange County Register assistant editor, will discuss how to get published at the meeting of the Orange County chapter of Independent Writers of Southern California at 7:30 p.m. Monday in Pomona First Federal Savings community room, 17851 17th St., Tustin. Free for members; $10 for non-members.

Send information about book-related events to: Books & Authors, View, The Times, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626. Deadline is two weeks before publication.