Hello fellow kid lit writers! I’m extra excited about this author interview today because I got to interview one of my dear college friends and brilliant author, Kaela Rivera! Kaela has some great writing advice for you all and some valuable insight into the publishing process. About Kaela Rivera Kaela Rivera is the award-winning author… Read more »
As a writer, it’s tempting to want to test out new styles and approaches to storytelling. One such is writing multiple points of view—where instead of one character’s voice telling the entire story, the author writes with more than one “narrator.” Multi-POV books are popular for many reasons: They allow readers to hear from more… Read more »
1. Pause A lot of folks claim the answer to overcoming burnout is to keep writing. The grit-your-teeth strategy may work for some people—indeed, there will be plenty of teeth-gritting no matter which path you take—but there’s a better way. Writers are performers. We’re professionals. We devote a tremendous amount of mental-emotional energy to our… Read more »
Today, Lori is interviewing May-lee Chai. They’ll be talking about understanding lives unlike our own and her book Tomorrow in Shanghai and Other Stories. Have you signed up to be a DIY MFA Radio Insider yet? This is an exciting new monthly newsletter especially for our podcast listeners. Every month, you’ll get an email from… Read more »
Hello, my lovely poets and poem-tinkerers, my fellow word wanderers. This week, I am coming to you with a special guest, Lesley Wheeler, author of the brilliant and warm nonfiction work of art, Poetry’s Possible Worlds. I had the pleasure and good fortune to interview her, and I can’t wait to share the insights and… Read more »
How to Analyze a First Chapter If you want to publish your manuscript, you need to learn how to write well-structured scenes that hook and engage your readers. You also need to learn how to balance fun and important details that work with structure. In other words, you need a scene where every line weaves… Read more »
Are you getting excited? Is your literary heart starting to quicken? Why? Because it’s almost fall, and soon a good portion of us will be reading under the golden light of autumn. Is there anything so romantic yet word nerdy? I think not. as many in our community head back to the classroom, I thought… Read more »
Creating characters in our books is never entirely straightforward, and so many are influenced by our own lives and the people in them; one might think it would make writing them easier, but that’s not always the case. There are so many reasons for starting over in life, and they all come with their own… Read more »
It would have been much easier—at least, from the point of view of research—to write a novel about the life of painter Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun. Le Brun’s surviving output is extensive. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York did a massive exhibition of her work in 2016. To top it off, she left… Read more »
Today, I have the pleasure of interviewing Mike Trigg. We’ll be talking about the intricacies of Silicon Valley and his book Bit Flip. Have you signed up to be a DIY MFA Radio Insider yet? This is an exciting new monthly newsletter, especially for our podcast listeners. Every month, you’ll get an email from our… Read more »
