YA Wednesday: Diversity (Still) Needed!
I was fortunate to enjoy a young adult fiction double header a couple of weeks ago. It began on a Friday night with a panel of five YA authors at Wellesley Books, followed the next day by the 5th annual…
Category: Diversity
To Writers, Especially White Ones
You are going to get it wrong. It is as fundamental to the craft as rejection, procrastination and gravity. A pursuit that requires you to put yourself into the heart and brain of another human being will lead you to…
Friday Feast: In Defense of Villainesses, Women Taking Charge, a Writer’s Guide to Hacking the Reader’s Brain (in 5 Steps), the Importance of Empathy as Craft, and What Happens When a Book Is Fatally Flawed
Maybe it’s because I’m writing a novel with two female leads who flirt with a whole heap of trouble. Maybe it’s because of the stunningly sexist commentary from the Olympics and the policing of women’s bodies on the regular. Whatever…
The Other!
Shakespeare did it. Flannery O’Connor did it. Jonathan Franzen does it all the time. Every playwright, short story writer, and novelist does it as a matter of course, yet there is still plenty of debate over the writer’s right to…
Writing your (gayest) truth
There are invisible radio waves floating around our heads, and somehow every new writer picks up one particular frequency that translates to: write your truth. It’s the first advice many of us receive, and the most often repeated. Some may…
Friday Feast: 12-Step Writing Process, Writer’s Laze, Working Class Literature, Committing to Diversity When You’re White, and the Middle of Things: Advice for Young Writers
I love reading about the writing processes of authors. You never know what knowledge you can glean and what new nugget you can pop in your writer toolbox. I especially love that Margo Kelly, author of our first link, highlighted…