“Tonight the revolution is happening around us. It is the light of this fire and my horse at the tree. It is the bodies that lie on the field not a mile from this camp. I will tell you what it is.” – Pancho Villa, The Beginning of His Excellent and Eventful Career

Cameron MacKenzie

Adjunct Professor of English Cameron MacKenzie was recently interviewed by Rose Martin of Blue Ridge PBS to talk about his novel which details aspects of Pancho Villa’s life and role in the Mexican Revolution. Published in 2018, The Beginning of His Excellent and Eventful Career “melds myth and legend, memoir and fiction, to create an astounding psychological portrait of Villa,” wrote co-editor of Painted Bride Quarterly Marion Wrenn.

Originally from Richmond, VA, MacKenzie has worked as an adjunct English instructor at Ferrum College for three years. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in English from James Madison University and his Ph.D. in English from Temple University. His love of literature began with well-known authors such as William Faulkner and later intermingled with the influence of his parents. He noted his mother was an English teacher and his father was a storyteller by nature. After college, MacKenzie kicked off his career in education by teaching English in Japan.

During the interview, which aired on November 12, 2019, MacKenzie explained why he was drawn to write about Villa after reading The Memoirs of Pancho Villa: “Just the voice, so interesting and mysterious at the same time…I need[ed] to figure out who this person [was].”

Was Villa a villain? A cutthroat? Something of a Robin Hood? MacKenzie still isn’t quite sure how to describe the complexities of Villa’s personality that emerged during the chaos of the Mexican Revolution, other than to say that “at some points, the world demands a certain kind of figure. And it’s not necessarily a good figure but it’s what is necessary for what is going to happen.”

Watch MacKenzie’s interview here.

The Ferrum College English program is hosting a reading by Cameron MacKenzie titled “Mythic Revolution: Pancho Villa and Historical Fiction” on September 25, 2018 from 4:30-5:30 p.m. on the main floor of the Stanley Library in the LeAP Studio.  The event is free and open to the public.   A reception will follow the reading, provided by Ferrum College’s Dining Services.

“I am not the revolution…I am the instrument of another hand.” So does Francisco “Pancho” Villa begin the tale of his journey from thief to warlord to the revolutionary leader of northern Mexico. By turns a confession and an act of seduction, The Beginning of His Excellent and Eventful Career chronicles a country remaking itself through blood and violence, giving shape to the boy who would dare to step from anonymity into power through the inexorable force of his will.

Cameron MacKenzie’s work has appeared in Able Muse, The Rumpus, SubStance and The Michigan Quarterly Review, among other journals. His collection of essays, Badiou and American Modernist Poetics, was published in August 2018 by Palgrave Macmillan. He teaches English at Ferrum College and reviews books for Roanoke Review. His novel, The Beginning of His Excellent and Eventful Career, chronicling the rise to power of Pancho Villa, was published in March 2018 by MadHat Press.

MacKenzie’s description of his creative writing and research process will include primary resources, presentation slides, and excerpted readings from the novel.