How to Make a Beginning
It’s hard to start to write. No matter the number of chapters or scenes or even emails I’ve written, when I have a blank page in front of me, I stop in my tracks. I see half a dozen different…
Category: Women Writers
That Western Lens That Filters Our Words
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…
Interview with Oyinkan Braithwaite, Author of My Sister, the Serial Killer
Oyinkan Braithwaite’s breathtaking novel, My Sister, the Serial Killer was published last November (Doubleday, 2018) and while the title caught my attention I picked it up because again and again I heard someone call it their favorite book of the…
Timeout for Teachers
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…
Young Adult Round-up: The Power of Online YA Police
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…
An Interview with Shobha Rao, Author of Girls Burn Brighter
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…