How Alabama native Mary Annaïse Heglar’s ‘Troubled Waters’ ties climate change and civil rights together

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. ( WIAT ) — Mary Annaïse Heglar describes herself as “based in New Orleans, but her heart is in Mississippi and her soul is in Birmingham.”

But what does that mean to the writer?

“I was born in Talladega, Alabama, but I grew up in Birmingham until I was nine years old. Then we moved to Mississippi and I just fell in love with it,” Heglar said. “I think Birmingham made me a storyteller, but Mississippi made me a writer.”

Heglar wrote her first poem as a fourth-grade student at Birmingham’s Midfield Elementary School and she’s “been writing ever since.” She counts James Baldwin, Toni Morrison and Octavia Bulter as some of her favorite writers.

In February, she released a children’s picture book titled “The World is Ours to Cherish” which focuses on climate change and caring for the environment. On May 7, Heglar published her debut fiction novel “Troubled Waters.”

“Troubled Waters is about the climate change generation, the civil rights generation, and the things that go unsaid between them,” Heglar said. “It’s about climate change, school desegregation and intergenerational trauma, but more than anything it’s about healing and the power of the love of family.”

Heglar spoke on her journey to becoming an author. Stepping outside of the nonprofit field, she considered what she wanted to write — and how — in 2014. In that moment, she connected her initial passion as a young writer alongside what she felt was an important cause that needed a voice: climate change.

“I got into climate change as a policy publications editor initially and then started writing myself because I had this powerful amount of climate grief,” she said. “Also the way that people talked about climate change was bugging me. I felt like it was always overly intellectualized, overly technical, and just also overly hopeful in a way that I felt like was infantilizing to readers.”

Since “Troubled Waters” is a work of fiction inspired by Heglar’s family roots, it can be described as a labor of love that’s taken five years to see in print.

“Although I’ve written a lot of personal essays where the names and dates have not been changed, this feels more personal and vulnerable than any nonfiction piece I’ve ever written,” she said.

Heglar’s grandparents lived through desegregation in the South, but it was a topic that was not discussed among her family members until after their deaths.

“I’m very proud of the way that I was able to develop the characters who are based on my grandparents and the research I did that helped me to understand their perspective,” she said. “The last chapter still makes me cry, even though I’ve read it countless times.”

For those interested in picking up “Troubled Waters,” Heglar took a moment to assure readers that the novel is more than just one message.

“This is a book about how to heal on a burning planet, or when the world’s falling apart, how to pick yourself back up again,” Heglar concluded. “It’s more about the power of family and Black love than it is about climate change.”

Heglar will attend two book signings for “Troubled Waters” in Alabama, one at the Burdock Book Collective in Birmingham on May 23 and one at New South Books in Montgomery on May 30.

For more information about the upcoming Birmingham event, visit Burdock Book Collective’s Instagram page.

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