When I began Shannon Doleski‘s upper-middle grade debut Mary Underwater, the sparse and powerful prose hooked me on page one.…
When I asked author Tina Athaide how she made her debut novel so suspenseful, she gave me a mini-course on…
In Blue Skies eleven year-old Glory Bea believes her daddy will come home from the war. He has to. He…
I’m still choked up after reading Her Own Two Feet, just out from Scholastic’s FOCUS imprint, about a Rwandan girl…
Last month, our protagonist realized she “could believe in science without giving up on magic.” This month, we’re looking at…
Look what’s out in paperback tomorrow (June 4)! The Mortification of Fovea Munson by Mary Winn Heider. It’s LOL funny—the…
My essay “So Many Names” is out this week in an anthology from Coming to the Table: Slavery’s Descendants: Shared…
Barbara Kingsolver says, “[Writing is] a project of balancing the audacity to do this work, and the humility to keep trying until you’ve gotten it right.”
Whether you measure progress in daily word counts or butt-in-chair hours, writing a first draft means letting characters surprise you.
Last year I asked a friend if she’d collaborate with me on a novel, and she didn’t say YES right…