Former resident and novelist to speak at SUNY Fredonia

SUNY Fredonia alumna Sarie Naetzker Mackay will talk to students at her alma mater at the invitation of the English Department on Thursday, Oct. 13. The author of two historical novels will give a Craft Talk at 4 p.m. and read from her works at 7 p.m., followed by a book signing. Both events will be held in McEwen Hall Room 202. The public is invited.

Mackay, the former Sarie Naetzker of Lakewood, N.Y., is the author of Lodestar (2006) and Fair Game (2010). The latter was named a quarterfinalist in the 2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards Competition sponsored by Amazon.com and Penguin Group.

Mackay graduated summa cum laude from SUNY Fredonia in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and specialization in professional writing. Her achievements as a student led faculty to select her for the distinctive Phi Beta Kappa Award her senior year. After graduating, Mackay was Historical Research Aide to Chautauqua County from 1977 to 1979.

The great-granddaughter of a Montana homesteader, Mackay was born in Chautauqua County but spent several years in Montana as a teen until she moved there permanently in 1979. Her passion for and intimacy with the Big Sky country informs her fiction, and sweeps her characters along on their journeys of love, longing, and awakening.

Mackay’s stories are character-driven and suffused with a well-researched sense of time and place. Her first book, Lodestar, follows the 19th century heroine, Persis Allen, as she leaves her home on the shores of Chautauqua Lake and embarks on a locomotive from Dunkirk for her married life in the Montana territory.

Her newest book, Fair Game, is the story of a fiery young Scotswoman caught in a dark conflict between two powerful ranching families in Montana’s legendary Judith Basin. Mackay’s inspiration for the alpha male wolf in Fair Game was Wolf No. 2, one of the earliest members of the Yellowstone Park wolf reintroduction project.

As a fulltime professional in the nonprofit sector, Mackay began expressing her passion for creative writing and historical research on evenings and weekends as she raised a family and pursued her career. She is the owner and operator of Lantern Lodge Publishing, based in Red Lodge, MT.

While she maintains a busy schedule of speaking engagements and book-signings, Mackay continues to work in philanthropy and is the executive director of the Beartooth Billings Clinic Foundation. Her writing credits also include a periodic newspaper column for the Carbon County News.