Next Chapters is a biweekly feature spotlighting graduates of GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator program, which has been running since 2010. Novel Incubator Year: 9 Current Project: There Is No Bear on Our Lake, literary fiction What writers have most influenced your…
Author and writing instructor Matt Bell recently spoke at Porter Square Books at Grub Street’s beautiful, new narrative arts center in Boston—in person no less! In introducing his new craft book, Refuse to Be Done (Soho Press, 2022), Bell promised…
Everybody has a trick for entering their writing. They light candles, turn on Mozart, twirl three times counterclockwise. Me, I cook. This is new. And it isn’t the cooking, really, it’s the smell. Seems I need the simmering of onions…
Dread is an instrument. Its sound varies depending on how you play it. We’ve all heard it before, in the background of movies and TV series: there’s the high-pitched note that stretches on and on, the irregularly thudding heartbeat, the…
I sometimes wonder whether, growing up, anyone ever uncovered my “dirty little secret.” I was not always good at hiding it: I misread social cues. I struggled to focus on conversations. I made few friends. I mimicked behavior I saw…
It’s a new year! Yay! And the vaccine is rolling out! Finally, you can exhale and concentrate on your novel. Not so fast, Hemingway. The end might be in sight, but as much as we we’d all like to move…