The Rural We: Wickham Boyle
She's a journalist, author, theater producer, finance consultant... the list goes on for Germantown's Wicki Boyle.
To say Wickham Boyle (known as Wicki) has had an interesting life would be a gross understatement. She’s been a New York City schoolteacher, director of special projects for the City of New York, executive director of La MaMa Theatre, a journalist who’s written for The New York Times, National Geographic and Budget Travel (among others), a financial consultant, opera librettist and book author. She'll be reading from her second, recently published book, “Getting to Grace: Stories of a Bumpy Ride to Midlife,” at the Germantown Library on Sunday, March 1 at 2 p.m.
The cover of my new book has a bike on it, because I used to ride my bike everywhere in the city. The bike represents the notion of bumpiness, which refers to having a life that’s not a straight line.
The book is tales from my life experience: having kids, leaving an abusive husband, getting embroiled in a scandal with him, quitting the nonprofit world. I was a single mother with two kids, so I became a stockbroker at age 42, then met and married the love of my life. We raised the kids together, and 14 years ago got our house in Germantown.
When I was working for the Department of Cultural Affairs, I was sent to the Yale School of Management so I could educate managers across the board. After I got my MBA, I worked in a foundation and hated it. Oh my god, you had to wear nylons! I encountered Ellen Stewart, founder of La MaMa Theatre, who wanted an executive director to take it to the next level. I produced over 60 shows while I was there.
All I ever wanted to do was be a writer. I became a journalist but had been writing essays all along. We lived in Tribeca, 10 blocks from Ground Zero, and after the attacks I wrote A Mother’s Essays from Ground Zero. All of the profits from the book went to schools that had closed downtown. I then turned the book into an opera, “Calling, an Opera of Forgiveness,” which opened at La MaMa in 2008, for which I commissioned the music. It did well, but it opened the day Lehman Brothers collapsed, so the opera didn’t go anywhere. I hope someone will pick it up, maybe as an oratorio.
I’ve had a lucky and crazy life. People have told me I should write about my experiences, but I couldn’t find a way to make them coalesce. A friend of mine whipped me into shape, deciding there should be chapters, and that’s how the book came together. I’ve been doing readings here and there. I’ll be going to Rome and Brussels for readings, then out to LA and San Francisco, invited by people I’ve known and who love the book.
One of the things about getting older is there’s less of a vicious desire to make things go fast. We put the book together little by little. If we can do things on a smaller basis, things might be a whole lot better.
I currently have a business helping kids get into college, working with them as they write their essays. The money I make from that allows me to donate my time to a couple of programs in Harlem, where we still have a place.
