New Spin: “Danse Macabre” and How to Make History Come Alive

When you combine 19th century Parisian history, classical music and dancing skeletons, what do you get? Saint-Saëns’s Danse Macabre, a spooky children’s picture book about how French composer Camille Saint-Saëns became inspired to create the orchestral piece “Danse Macabre,” or “dance of death,” after a visit to an underground cemetery. Published in August 2013, Saint-Saëns’s… Read more »

What Is “New Spin,” Anyway?

Here at DIY MFA, we love to share exciting new books and up-and-coming authors with our audience – you! That’s why I started New Spin, a bi-monthly DIY MFA column that covers everything that falls within alternative storytelling and new approaches to reading books: literary mash-ups, books that put a new spin on classic stories… Read more »

New Spin: The Graphic Novel of “Miss Peregrine”

Every month or two, DIY MFA’s Wendy Lu will be hosting “New Spin,” a column that covers everything that falls within alternative storytelling: literary mash-ups, books that put a new spin on classic stories, and “meta-books” that use new media, graphic illustrations, and interaction between words/design for an enhanced reader experience. Supernatural, eerie, weird. These… Read more »

New Spin: Celebrating the Release of “Battle Bunny”

Imagine taking a sweet picture book about cats and then altering it completely – crossing out and penciling in new text, drawing over the illustrations and scribbling laser beams that shoot out from the cat’s eyes with a permanent marker. Back when we were wildly imaginative kids, we did this to books all the time…. Read more »

What I Learned About The Evolution of Story With Lisa Cron

Lisa Cron is the author of WIRED FOR STORY: The Writer’s Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers From the Very First Sentence, and her video tutorial Writing Fundamentals: The Craft of Story can be found at Lynda.com. She’s worked in publishing at W.W. Norton, as an agent at the Angela Rinaldi Literary Agency,… Read more »

What I Learned About Reading Like a Writer from Erin Harris

Erin Harris is a literary agent at Folio Literary Management who represents literary and book club fiction, YA, and narrative non-fiction. Her clients include Times Magazine contributor Carla Power, New Criterion editor David Yezzi, and debut novelists Daniel Levine and Jennifer Laam. Erin received her MFA in Creative Writing from The New School. Outside of… Read more »

Writing Across Genres: Q&A With Kat Martin

We are pleased to host New York Times bestselling author Kat Martin, focuses on romantic suspense in her novels. Her newest book AGAINST THE MARK–the ninth installment of the AGAINST series– releases today! Romance Reviews says of the AGAINST series, “Every book in this series is excellent with hot romance and murder.” You can find Martin’s… Read more »

Reading and Studying Mentor Texts

Most writers are readers. We grew up absorbed in books. I was one of those kids who grew up without a television, so I was reading a book a day on average.  I still read a lot now, but unfortunately, I don’t absorb good writing technique automatically. I have to be deliberate about it. I… Read more »