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 »
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 »
Writers have vivid imaginations, so I am asking you to use this creative gift and imagine, for a moment, they nominated you for a Nobel Prize in Literature. It’s a stretch, but play along so I can make my point. You did not take the prize but are gracious and want to congratulate the winner…. Read more »
As I write this article, I am in the company of my two spider plants. They live in a corner where they get some light from the overhead tape LEDs when I work during the day. My office does not have a window for them to receive direct daylight. They are surviving but not necessarily… Read more »
Well, it took me a couple of years, but I found more author sleuths for you! This time, however, I mixed in some sleuths who, while famous, aren’t authors or at least aren’t famous because of any books they wrote. It turns out I used up most of the author sleuths in my first installment,… Read more »
I live in a house built in the 1800’s, so you’d think it would be easy for me to imagine the life of the 19th century character in my new novel Long Shadows. Tom Smiley is now a ghost in his boyhood home of the same vintage who is so deeply scarred by his time… Read more »
