Mae Durden-Nelson

BIOGRAPHIES

Alora (Mae) Durden-Nelson retired in 1997 after twenty-seven years as the Comfort School District’s elementary children’s librarian where she authored and produced puppet, marionette, and/or stage plays twice a year, every year, with fifth and sixth grade students for her Elementary Library Children’s Theater project. One play, THE CASE OF THE EASTER VILLIANS, was published in Plays Inc. magazine.

She has served on several community service boards including Comfort Chamber of Commerce (seven years); Comfort Public Education Foundation board, writing public relations news articles and served on the scholarship committee; she served on the board of the Comfort Public Library, was elected president in 1995, and served until her retirement from public school. Most recently, she was secretary of the board of the Comfort Area Youth Commission where she also served as a grant writer and editor of the CAYC newsletter. The Rising Star Masonic Lodge of Center Point, Texas honored her with a Community Builder Award in 1998. Also, the Comfort Heritage Foundation recognized her with the 2007 award for “recording history” in the book WHEN SAINTS GO MARCHING, the 100-year history of St. Boniface Episcopal Church in Comfort. Durden-Nelson has been a member of the Southwest Chapter of Book Writers and Illustrators since 1986 and is a member of the Texas Author’s Speakers Bureau.

Her earlier writing credits include being a stringer/freelance reporter and Society Editor for the Kerrville Daily Times; In 1968 she compiled and wrote the history of the Immanuel Lutheran Church in Comfort, WITH ETERNAL GLORY and authored two newspaper series for the COMFORT NEWS on the History of the Comfort PTA and Why Voter Registration?.

Durden-Nelson’s first retirement-writing venture, requested by the YMCA in 1999, was to research the history of the 1,100 acre Robert’s Ranch near Comfort and then produced a brochure for the ranch to encourage Boy and Girl Scout troops primitive camping, field trips for educational, historical, archeological, rock-climbing and birding adventures.

Durden-Nelson first book, I JUST CALLED HER MOMMA, contracted by Eakin Press in 2000, was published in 2003 and she has written and published a book a year ever since: SON OF DEFIANCE c. 2004; the sequel GENESIS -Beginning Again, c. 2005; WHEN SAINTS GO MARCHING, c. 2006 (a commissioned work); FOUR BOYS, TWO CANOES, and THE GUADALUPE RIVER c. 2007; and THERE’S A RACCOON IN MY BATHROOM in 2009, released in 2010. Her last book, THE LITTLE HOUSE WITH A BIG STORY was be released in November, 2010. All her books have been published by Eakin Press, Waco, Texas. AT HOME AT THE RANGE is her latest book.

Durden-Nelson and her husband Bill Nelson have given book talks throughout Texas since 2003. Contact may be made through her website: www.MaeDurdenNelson.com