Hey there word nerds! Today I am delighted to have author Chloe Benjamin on the show! Chloe received an MFA in fiction from the University of Wisconsin, and her first novel, The Anatomy of Dreams, received the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award and was longlisted for the 2014 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Her… Read more »
Besides actually doing the writing, I’ve found that the hardest part of forging a writing career is making goals. There are more opportunities now then there have ever been: you can submit to literary magazines, pitch to editors at almost any publication, apply for writing residencies, and, if the opportunity presents itself, go to graduate… Read more »
Drum roll, please! Book award season is here. Every February, during its midwinter meeting, the American Library Association (ALA) announces the best children’s and young adults books published during the previous year. For lovers of children’s literature everywhere, it is the equivalent of the Oscars. There are acceptance speeches, selection committees, runners-up (honor books), and… Read more »
What’s the fastest way to lose your readers’ trust and interest? Sprinkle your text with grammar mistakes: mess with subject-verb agreement, write only in fragments or run-ons, add apostrophes where they don’t belong, and for good measure, get creative with spelling. If, however, you want to maintain credibility, you’ll need to mop up grammar errors… Read more »
Hey there word nerds! Today I have the absolute pleasure of interviewing author Georgia Hunter on the show! Georgia’s debut novel, We Were the Lucky Ones, is an emotional story about a Jewish family ripped away from each other at the start of the German and Russian occupation of Poland, and their extraordinary journey back… Read more »
Dear Editor, I am revising my first novel, which is also the first novel in a speculative historical fiction trilogy. It has been a great joy, and I’m working on book two, so I feel pretty confident that I want to move this thing forward and that it’s worth the effort of revising. I’m having… Read more »
Okay, readers, today (and the next fourteen articles) I’m going to try something different. If you’ve read my articles before, you might remember one about outlining. In it, I mention James Scott Bell’s (JSB) idea on signposting scenes, which fuses the processes of outliners and non-outliners together—genius! Well, I’ve got even greater news. While reading… Read more »
So, you’ve written a novel. You’ve put in the time and effort. The many years. Sweat, and certainly tears. But, what now? How do you turn that mess of words into a workable story that people actually want to read? Not that I’m saying the work you’ve slaved over is a mess, but to paraphrase… Read more »
Hey there word nerds! Today I am delighted to have Rodrigo Hasbún on the show! Rodrigo is a Bolivian novelist whose work has appeared in many top literary magazines such as Granta and Words Without Borders. In 2007, he was selected by the Hay Festival as one of the best Latin American writers under the… Read more »
“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one becomes a master.”—Ernest Hemingway Writers are, by nature, dreamers. We dream about finishing a book. Then we dream about getting an agent. A book deal. Hitting the New York Times list. On and on and on. But here’s the thing: each one of these dreams,… Read more »
