My Legacy of Lying
I come from a long line of liars. My grandfather, a Russian potato farmer, was conscripted into the army in World War I to serve on the eastern front. Most of the soldiers couldn’t read or write, but my grandfather…
Category: Fiction
YA Wednesday: Matters of Race
After the horrific events of this past week, the blogosphere is buzzing with posts about race in America and the Black Lives Matter movement. When I was a kid, there weren’t a lot of books tackling issues of race, identity,…
We Each Have Our Own Yoknapatawpha
By Guest Contributor Virginia Pye We all know writers with unpublished manuscripts hidden in desk drawers. Successful authors often admit to a half dozen failed, boxed-away books. Emily Dickinson bundled her poems with string and placed them under her bed….
Friday Feast: When No One Shows Up to Your Reading, Beach Reads, Novels of Exile and Dislocation, Five Down and Dirty Editing Tricks, and Five Stunning Writing Retreats
If you read nothing else in today’s links*, I hope you read Matthew Norman’s account of a reading at Barnes & Noble where no one showed up. Or at least he thought that no one had showed up to his reading until…
Visions of Summer
There’s something about summer that stirs a longing within me. Not a longing to sunbathe on a hot, sandy beach or embark on a long trek in the mountains, or take an exotic vacation, though I enjoy those activities, too….
YA Wednesday: BookCon, Children’s Literature History & Trends
BookExpo America (BEA), the book industry’s long-running trade expo, took place in Chicago last week. Within BEA, teens and YA book lovers convened at BookCon, a convention for book lovers that combined storytelling and pop culture in a daylong event….