Meet Laura Mahal

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Laura Mahal. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Laura below.

Hi Laura, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?

My resilience comes from several sources: 1.) My Czech/Moravian maternal grandparents, who came to this country at ages seven (my grandfather) and eighteen (my grandmother) . . . Grandpa Joe ended up earning a degree in landscape architecture from Ohio State University. He and Grandma Emma worked for a wealthy, well-connected family, then their spinster daughter, for more than fifty years as gardener / cook respectively. During this time, Joe and Emma bought a centuries-old farmhouse and three hundred acres of land, which they farmed evenings and weekends while raising my mother and aunt. My grandparents outlived the spinster, inherited some of her antiques, but what my grandparents passed down was this capacity to work hard, to earn one’s bread honestly, through sheer diligence. They taught me to labor with love and a long view toward desired outcomes. (I should say I also received two green thumbs, which is a source of stress relief, for sure.) 2.) My military service. As child number five, one who wanted to go to an Ivy League school instead of community college, I signed on the dotted line with the U.S. Army when I was yet seventeen. Serving on active duty for a year amid my undergrad was a life-changing experience, one I will never forget or regret. 3.) Surviving a horrific car accident and coming back from two hip reconstructions. Still rebounding from the second six-hour operation. Yet I know I have what it takes to “dig deep” and persevere. With a fair degree of cheer, no less!

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I’ve been writing and editing professionally for a decade, since my children were old enough for me to focus fully on my own career. (Both are now thriving in college on the East Coast. Yay for successful empty-nesting! <3) Mostly, I copyedit fiction for experienced writers who take my notes to heart, incorporate fixes, then send their novels on to their literary agent or publishing house. Occasionally, I freelance and write articles for magazines or anthologies, yet in the main, I stick to writing fiction (short stories and long-form fiction), as well as poetry and the occasional personal essay. This year, I won a trip to the NFSPS conference in Roswell, Georgia, where I also earned a few state prizes. In 2024, I was also accepted into an MFA program, where I will earn a second master’s in creative writing (Nature Writing, specifically), having completed a two-year writing fellowship through Lighthouse Writers last year. So I’ve got four novels under my belt, in various phases of “ready to ship,” though political shifts may necessitate some rewriting . . . Or not. I tend to be rather a daring soul. :D Passion projects for me include the LGBTQIA+ and veterans’ communities. I write and edit for both. One particular project I’m proud of is called Charlie Mike. In military terms, “Charlie Mike” stands for “continue the mission,” and that’s what these two (and counting) anthologies do . . . I always edit for veterans for free (a way to give back) and partnered with Colorado State University to produce two anthologies of veterans’ writing. These essays, short stories, poems, and photographs lend insight into the mindset of a veteran. Working with this veteran-led team has given me immeasurable joy, as well as some amount of solace. Very much like gardening, which heals my hands and heart, editing for veterans helps me to face my own inner demons—as some people term these. This keeps me on fairly steady, upbeat footing. We’ll likely produce the next edition of Charlie Mike in the spring or summer of 2025.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

I’d say one of my skills involves languages (which I am blessed with a knack for), but also the *willingness to bravely go to new places. Ideally, one would learn enough of the language of the place one intends to visit to “blend,” make friends with locals. Luckily, my military service led me to many locales in the States: around D.C. and Northern Virginia / Maryland, Massachusetts, Alabama, Washington, then to Germany. I also had the wonderful opportunity to study abroad in Prague soon after the wall came down, to visit the Prague Castle and meet then-President Dubcek, to go to the fiftieth anniversary / reunion of survivors of the Terezin concentration camp (awful and horrendous yet also inspiring and another experience that will live with me always). Then on to other places in Eastern and Western Europe. Later, winning a writing prize took me to Ireland (friendliest people one could hope to meet—no one would let me buy my own whiskey or Guinness) and the U.K. An American overseas will usually be considered representative of all Americans. Therefore, one will receive the “third degree”—answering these broad questions has helped me to better understand this country and the actions we take domestically and internationally. So for me, these skills were 1.) language(s), 2.) political savvy (my undergrad is in internal service) and 3.) the ability to listen deeply and with an open mind to what others have to say.

What do I draw from this in terms of advice to others? *Work past any shyness in encountering new situations—I do believe this is a teachable skill—and once you begin to attain this, *stretch your own boundaries by crossing borders, be that in your own community (the parts you don’t usually visit, perhaps?) and *chat with folks. Sure, I have one of those faces that gets me far—I look like the mom-next-door and this helps. Yet I’ve also done this in India where I don’t fit in quite so readily. (Shared platters of fresh coconut slices with moms at India Gate while we all nursed our babies. That was indelibly bonding!) As a writer, the willingness to talk with people of all faiths, denominations, affiliations, and deeply held dreams has helped me in myriad ways.

Who has been most helpful in helping you overcome challenges or build and develop the essential skills, qualities or knowledge you needed to be successful?

When I was an undergraduate taking ROTC classes at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., I felt distinctly disgruntled. Other (older) cadets were “teaching” us, but not adeptly. I feared being commissioned as a Regular Army second lieutenant when I graduated, yet knowing less than the platoon I was tasked with leading. Since I’ve had a lifelong desire to learn, I found someone willing to go above-and-beyond with teaching me: Sergeant Major Grant Fox. A sergeant major (SGM) is the highest-ranking enlisted soldier, short of the one SGM of the Army.

Not only was SGM Fox a veteran of Vietnam and other conflicts, but he took me under his wing, nurtured my desire to learn outside of ROTC classes and physical training (PT) sessions along the towpath. It was SGM Fox who helped me find active-duty training as an enlisted soldier (military police) when I took a year off school . . . another story for another day. But what worked against me, *thus teaching me the most important lesson of all, was seeing the racism that resulted.

I am a white woman, then a college student in my late teens / early twenties. SGM Fox, this brilliant mentor of mine, a Black man (in his then-sixties?), plus “fraternizing” between future officers and non-commissioned officers was frowned upon. Georgetown’s ROTC program was historically slanted toward a very white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant male set of cadets. So when I went to the required Army ROTC training in Fort Lewis, Washington and came back with all fives out of fives—the only cadet to receive such high tallies across the board—there was gossip. The bad kind. It was hard for people to reconcile I’d just come off a year of active-duty training, a PT patch (for perfect scores in fitness), then on to what struck me as relatively tame ROTC evaluatory training. I’d crossed all sorts of invisible lines, without even realizing this at the time.

In retrospect, I’m glad that kerfuffle happened. My kids grew up knowing about SGM Fox. They would tell me, “Mom, no one is coming over for an inspection.” He lived large for them too, and has a place on my shoulder, my personal Jiminy Cricket to this day. = *Greatness is attainable if we fight, and yes, women and people of color and people in communities often disenfranchised, well, we can succeed too. Despite many an obstacle, if we have a loving mentor in our corner

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Image Credits

My husband took the photo: Param S. Mahal

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