Biographies of Maggie Dubris (nominated by Andrew Gallix) describe her as a poet, a musician, a former ambulance driver, and a practicing musician. Of her latest novel, Skels, about a paramedic in 1979 New York, Dubris writes:
When I wrote Skels, I was thinking about what would happen if the ambulance world really was permeated with the works of past writers, and the skels were carrying the consciousnesses of the writers themselves. What would I have done if I had met the greatest poet of all, and been granted the chance to save him. Not from dying, but from his own life.
I want people to read my book and see what I saw. Not what I literally saw but the way it felt in my soul, magical and violent and funny, filled with passion, and like it contained some ancient element that was invisible from the outside. I want them to think about how people who are considered the lowliest by our society can have something wonderful hidden inside them.
More about Maggie Dubris
+ Dubris books and CDs
+ Popmatters' review of Skels
+ Gothamist interview with Dubris
+ dogmatika interview with Dubris