At the Muse and the Marketplace conference a few days ago, someone said American publishers were looking for stories not filtered through the American lens. I almost laughed out loud. Well said, but it was a false statement. I wasn’t…
Dear Teacher, By this point, you’ve survived the flu, the stomach bug, and emotional outbursts from that one student in your classroom who never, ever misbehaves at home. “No problem,” you tell your principal as you wonder if the bottle…
As an American who’s written a novel about an American girl caught up in political turmoil in Honduras that includes Honduran characters, I’m particularly concerned about controversies like the one blowing up on the Twittersphere over the YA book, A…
Shobha Rao’s stunning novel, Girls Burn Brighter, is just out in paperback (Flatiron, 2018) and you should run, not walk, to your local bookstore and buy a copy. It was named one of the best books of 2018 by NPR…
The dreaded question, “How’s your book selling?” invariably sends me into a spiral of self-doubt. But I’m not the only writer who doesn’t make much, if any money, from her books. According to a recent New York Times article “Writing…
A quick glance at the praise on Mira T. Lee’s website tells the story. Her debut novel, Everything Here Is Beautiful, was deemed a top fiction pick for 2018 by Amazon, Goodreads, Reader’s Digest, Real Simple, and O, The Oprah…