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WORK TITLE: If We Were Villains
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://mlrio.com/
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RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born c. 1992, in Miami, FL.
EDUCATION:University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, bachelor’s degree; King’s College London and Shakespeare’s Globe, masters degree; University of Maryland, doctoral student.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, novelist, and actor. Worked in bookstores and theatres.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
M.L. Rio grew up in North Carolina and traces her writing career back to the first grade when she entered the Reading Rainbows Young Writers and illustrators Contest, submitting a story about a pet dragon. At the age of twelve, Rio began writing a novel. Shortly afterwards, Rio became interested in acting and in William Shakespeare’s plays, making her first stage appearance in a Shakespeare staging at the age of fourteen. “I read my first Shakespeare play at age nine,” Rio told Dallas Morning News Online contributor Alejandra Salazar, noting: ‘Something about the language was so captivating” and calling it “this strange, earth-shattering moment.” Rio has a masters degree in Shakespeare Studies and is studying towards a doctorate in modern English literature.
For her debut novel, If We Were Villains, Rio draws from her Shakespearean studies, “deftly weaving passages … from several plays into a tale worthy of the Bard himself,” wrote Booklist contributor Jane Murphy. The novel revolves around a murder that occurred ten years earlier. Oliver Marks was a young actor studying Shakespeare at an elite college. Oliver and six young fellow actors were playing roles that seemed to be assigned according to their offstage personas, from hero and villain to temptress and extra. When one of the students murdered, Oliver is convicted of the crime.
As the novel opens, Oliver has just been released from jail after having served a decade behind bars. As he leaves the prison, he is met by Detective Colborne, who maintained his doubts about Oliver’s guilt. Colborne wants to know what really happened all those years ago. He tells Oliver he will face no repercussions if he tells him what really happened. Oliver agrees, and the story is then told in a series of flashbacks.
The students’ immersion into the works of Shakespeare has them talking in Shakespearean language even when they are not rehearsing or on stage, quoting poetry and lines from plays. Shakespeare’s “characters have taken over their souls, and the power struggles, jealousies, and murderous rages that fill the dramas have crossed into their real lives,” wrote a Kirkus Reviews contributor. The turning point, however, seems to have occurred when the young actors are assigned roles that reverse their previous standings within the acting troupe, such as students who normally played secondary characters being given lead roles. After the murder, the remaining six young actors draw upon their theatre training to convince the police of their innocence. “In this strong and assured first novel, Rio crafts an intricate story about friendship, love, and betrayal,” wrote Xpress Reviews contributor Amy Hoseth.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, March 15, 2017, Jane Murphy, review of If We Were Villains, p. 23.
Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 2017, review of If We Were Villains.
Publishers Weekly, February 27, 2017, review of If We Were Villains, p. 71.
Xpress Reviews, April 14, 2017, Amy Hoseth, review of If We Were Villains.
ONLINE
Dallas Morning News Online, https://www.dallasnews.com/ (July 19, 2017), Alejandra Salazar, “Author M.L. Rio Is a Millennial Shakespearean with Stories to Tell.”
M.L. Rio Website, https://mlrio.com (November 1, 2017).*
M. L. Rio was born in Miami and raised in North Carolina by parents from California, and has never been able to satisfactorily answer the question, “Where are you from?” She spent most of her childhood in Middle Earth or Neverland or Wonderland, attended Hogwarts for a number of years, and eventually graduated from the real-life University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with degrees in English and dramatic art and a minor in creative writing. Storytelling has always been her specialty.
Her writing career began when she participated in Reading Rainbow’s Young Writers and Illustrators Contest in the first grade and wrote her first real story–about a girl who was lucky enough to have a pet dragon and somehow clever enough to hide it from her parents and all of the governmental authorities which might, conceivably, have been interested in such a biological marvel. She suppressed the creative itch for another four years, and then picked up a pen to write her first novel at the much more judicious age of twelve. She finished it at fourteen, mercifully realized it was garbage, and immediately started writing something else. (One decade and half a dozen ‘Drawer Novels’ later, she’s thrilled to say that she is represented by Arielle Datz of Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary Agency, Inc. and is looking forward to the publication of her de facto first novel by Flatiron Books.)
At about the same time she started to explore Life as Author, she also started to explore Life as Actor. She made her stage debut in the title role of Rumplestiltskin. (At the time she was convinced that she was the best actor in the company; in reality she was simply the smallest and therefore likely the most convincing as a dwarf.) Not long after she discovered the sublime delights of Shakespeare, and soon she was suffering from a case of full-blown Bardolatry. She made her first Shakespearean stage appearance at age fourteen, and since then has played a wide variety of his characters, from the infamous hunchback Richard III to the fairy queen Titania. She holds a master’s degree in Shakespeare Studies from King’s College London and Shakespeare’s Globe, and will be starting her PhD in early modern English literature at the University of Maryland in the Fall. Until then she is somewhere in the United States, enjoying the freedom that comes with having no permanent address.
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Author M.L. Rio is a millennial Shakespearean with stories to tell
M.L. Rio wants to make something clear: Writing a book is not, in any sense of the word, romantic.
Rio learned this on the job as she assembled her debut novel, If We Were Villains, a literary thriller in the mold of classic Shakespearean drama.
This was in 2014. Rio was just 22, fresh out of college, and kept working on revisions for the next few years while earning a master's degree in Shakespeare studies at King’s College London. Today, with If We Were Villains’ release this past April, she’s now an internationally published author.
“Don’t romanticize” writing a book, says Rio, who grew up in North Carolina and is staying in Dallas with family before moving on to graduate school. "Because if you romanticize it, then it’s never going to happen. You really cannot underestimate how much work this is.”
She’s not exaggerating. In her account, this process included 45 drafts of the same story, each rewrite an embittered battle between edit deadlines and sleep deprivation.
As ragged days and insomniac nights ran into each other, Rio would often recall some early guidance passed down from a past theater instructor: “Don’t become an actor” — or in this case, a writer — “if you can imagine yourself doing anything else, because it’s merciless.”
Especially as a young writer like Rio, still piecing together a name for herself, writing a book is a true labor of love for the craft. It's a project that gets done in the fleeting moments of free time in your overbooked calendar, held together by backed up Microsoft Word files, sheer willpower and merciless edits.
“Only about 10 percent of the work a writer does makes it on the page,” Rio says. “If you’re going to write anything good, you first have to write a lot of stuff that is really, really bad. ... It’s beating ideas into shape until they work.”
But we know that this story, at least, has a happy ending: Eventually, If We Were Villains did work, and it was because Rio allowed her passions take form on the page — she wrote what she knew, over and over. And what she knows is Shakespeare.
Melanie Rio has been a writer since she was 12, when she wrote her first novel. She has been a thespian for even longer, since acting in her first play (that she remembers) when she was 6.
In many ways, it began with the Bard. “I read my first Shakespeare play at age 9. Something about the language was so captivating. ... It was this strange, earth-shattering moment,” she says.
Rio has even visited the Kronborg Castle, perhaps better known as Hamlet’s Elsinore, after winning a contest. Her entry was a poem in iambic pentameter — a Shakespearean sonnet.
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Rio likes to think of Shakespeare’s work as having a universal appeal, especially for young adults — not teens, exactly, but her personal target audience, readers in their early 20s who often find themselves in an identity crisis as they straddle adolescence and adulthood.
“The familiarity and humanity of Shakespeare is something we can really identify with,” she says. “It’s timeless. As long as humans keep being humans, Shakespeare is going to be relevant. ... It’s why we quote him all the time. In 400 years, no one has said these things better.”
If We Were Villains embodies Rio's view on Shakespeare. The book features a group of elite theater students who blur the line between Shakespeare’s scripts and their reality. It comes to a tragic and abrupt head when someone ends up dead, and the characters are forced to confront what they may be capable of.
“It’s a great human story,” says Ray Dooley, a professor of dramatic arts at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He taught and mentored Rio in theater arts during her undergraduate career.
“I met Melanie when she was a first-year student at UNC-Chapel Hill,” he recalls. “At that point I knew that Melanie was very special, in terms of her love and the really serious sense of purpose she found in her work with Shakespeare, and with literature in general.”
The way he sees it, it’s almost as if this is the book Rio was always supposed to write. “She is a remarkable writer and person,” Dooley says. “She has the potential, because of her combination of serious scholarship and contemporary sensibility, to become a public scholar along the lines of Stephen Greenblatt [a bestselling Shakespearean scholar].”
Madison McKenzie Scott, a longtime friend, fellow Shakespearean actor and former college classmate of Rio’s, concurs. “It’s always been a piece of her character,” Scott says. “It’s how I think of her: Shakespeare, no sleep and writing novels.”
Rio’s unusually strong work ethic often required sacrificing rest and social outings, but also led to her securing a book deal soon after she first sent her manuscript off to agents. (She wrapped up the first version of book in summer 2014 and sold it to Flatiron Books in 2015).
Her friends, Scott included, were not surprised. “It was a shock that it happened so fast, but everyone was like, ‘Of course, that would happen to Mel,’” Scott says. “She works so hard.”
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Rio’s future plans include a doctoral program at the University of Maryland and — you guessed it — writing, writing, writing. She’s recently sent her agent her newest manuscript.
“I have no worries that M would write anything subpar,” says Christine Kopprasch, Rio’s editor at Flatiron Books. “She has this ineffable quality of voice that’s hard to explain, it’s one of those you-know-it-when-you-see-it kinds of things. ... In general, she just needs to keep writing the very best book that she can to follow up her first.”
To accomplish this, Rio is sticking to what she knows yet again — but this time, it’s not Shakespeare. “My two loves,” she jokes, “are Shakespeare and 1970s rock bands.”
Using the momentum from If We Were Villains, she’s now working on what she calls her “rock 'n' roll book.” It’s a road trip novel set in the summer of 1977, filled with coming-of-age tensions built to appeal to old and new audiences alike — but that’s another story altogether.
M. L. RIO
M. L. Rio has worked in bookstores and theatres for years, and is currently pursuing her MA in Shakespeare Studies at King’s College London. If We Were Villains is her debut novel.
If We Were Villains
Jane Murphy
Booklist.
113.14 (Mar. 15, 2017): p23.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
If We Were Villains.
By M. L. Rio.
Apr. 2017. 368p. Flatiron, $25.99 (9781250095282); e-book, 512.99 (9781250095305).
Rio, a Shakespearean scholar, brings her expertise to this debut novel, deftly weaving passages both brief and lengthy
from several plays into a tale worthy of the Bard himself. When Oliver Marks is released after spending 10 years in
jail, his arresting officer is waiting for him. Detective Colborne was never convinced of his guilt. Oliver and six other
young actors were studying Shakespeare at an elite arts conservatory. Each was consistendy cast in roles that match
their offstage identities--the hero, the villain, the victim, and other dramatis personae. When these roles were reversed
in a new production, and the secondary characters were given lead roles, this order was disturbed, with fatal
consequences. When one of the group is found dead, those remaining marshal their considerable theatrical talents to
baffle the police, and Oliver ends up taking the blame. And so, their breathtaking tale, full of sound and fury, is finally
told, ending in one final, astonishing twist. Recommended for readers with refined literary tastes, and those looking for
"something like" Donna Tartt.---Jane Murphy
Murphy, Jane
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Murphy, Jane. "If We Were Villains." Booklist, 15 Mar. 2017, p. 23. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA490998439&it=r&asid=b8a974f46d4eb1213847ff2e46ebb183.
Accessed 15 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A490998439
10/15/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1508092968574 2/4
If We Were Villains
Publishers Weekly.
264.9 (Feb. 27, 2017): p71.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
If We Were Villains
M.L. Rio. Flatiron, $25.99 (368p) ISBN 978-1250-09528-2
The premise of Rio's debut novel is intriguing: it's a murder mystery set at a Illinois college specializing in
Shakespeare studies, led by a man with the coincidentally appropriate name of Holinshed. The story follows a group of
college students' passions, jealousies, and insecurities, which, over time, escalate to murder. Rio makes effective use of
her framing device--a prologue set in 2007 introduces one of the students, Oliver Marks, who is about to be released on
parole from prison after a decade behind bars for murder. The homicide detective who handled the case, Joseph
Colborne, is about to retire from the force and attempts to convince Oliver to finally come clean about what really
happened by promising him that anything he reveals will be off the record. Flashbacks disclose what led up to the
death of one of the students in 1997 and the tensions Oliver observed among his classmates before and after. Though
the plot twists may not surprise some readers, this is a solid mystery that keeps the pages turning. (Apr.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"If We Were Villains." Publishers Weekly, 27 Feb. 2017, p. 71. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA485671145&it=r&asid=42048588ff874acecf9686969b946cd2.
Accessed 15 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A485671145
10/15/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1508092968574 3/4
Rio, M.L.: IF WE WERE VILLAINS
Kirkus Reviews.
(Feb. 15, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Rio, M.L. IF WE WERE VILLAINS Flatiron Books (Adult Fiction) $25.99 4, 11 ISBN: 978-1-250-09528-2
For a clique of aspiring Shakespearean actors at an elite arts academy, the line between performance and reality
dissolves, with disastrous results.In the prologue to this bloody, melodramatic, suspenseful debut novel, we meet
former drama student Oliver Marks, now finishing up a 10-year prison sentence. He is visited by the cop who brought
him to justice on the eve of his retirement, asking if Marks will finally tell him the truth of what happened that night at
Dellecher Classical Conservatory. He agrees to do so after his upcoming release, on the condition that there are no
repercussions for revealing his secrets. And so he begins. "Enter the players. There were seven of us then, seven bright
young things with wide precious futures ahead of us...surrounded by words and books and poetry, all the fierce
passions of the world bound in leather and vellum." They are in their fourth year, the kings and queens of the campus,
dividing among them all the best roles in the productions of Macbeth and Julius Caesar planned for that fall. But as the
semester progresses it becomes clear that just as Shakespeare's language has taken over their speech--they address each
other constantly in quotes from the poetry and bits of repartee from the plays--his characters have taken over their
souls, and the power struggles, jealousies, and murderous rages that fill the dramas have crossed into their real lives. "I
have ransacked Shakespeare's entire oeuvre with giddy abandon," Rio confesses in her Author's Note, managing to
cleverly weave a whole new story from the poetry and plots of Macbeth, Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, and King Lear. "Do
you blame Shakespeare for any of it?" the retired detective asks the released convict. "I blame him for all of it," the
narrator replies. This novel about obsession at the conservatory will thoroughly obsess you.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Rio, M.L.: IF WE WERE VILLAINS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Feb. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA480922077&it=r&asid=94f874e472853ec51887296f14fc3bee.
Accessed 15 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A480922077
10/15/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1508092968574 4/4
Rio, M.L. If We Were Villains
Amy Hoseth
Xpress Reviews.
(Apr. 14, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC
http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/reviews/xpress/884170-289/xpress_reviews-first_look_at_new.html.csp
Full Text:
[STAR]Rio, M.L. If We Were Villains. Flatiron: Macmillan. Apr. 2017. 368p. ISBN 9781250095282. $25.99; ebk.
ISBN 9781250095305. F
[DEBUT] Echoing such college-set novels as Donna Tartt's The Secret History and mixing in enough Shakespearean
theater to qualify readers for the stage, Rio's debut mystery is an engrossing ride. The novel opens with Oliver Marks
talking to the detective who put him in prison. Even though it is the eve of Oliver's release, he agrees to tell the retiring
detective what really happened a decade earlier, when--as part of a group of seven actors who studied Shakespeare at a
small private arts college--one of his friends was killed after a night of drink and debauchery. Rio's prose is solid, and
she demonstrates a flair for capturing the grand drama and petty jealousies that encircle Oliver and his cohorts. Plus,
she throws in a thrilling, twisty end that readers won't see coming.
Verdict In this strong and assured first novel, Rio crafts an intricate story about friendship, love, and betrayal.
Recommended for readers who enjoy literary fiction by authors such as Tartt or Emily St. John Mandel. [See Prepub
Alert, 10/24/16.]--Amy Hoseth, Colorado State Univ. Lib., Fort Collins
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Hoseth, Amy. "Rio, M.L. If We Were Villains." Xpress Reviews, 14 Apr. 2017. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA492536810&it=r&asid=aa5b459e69d89fce4b19e67d4e611698.
Accessed 15 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A492536810