Search
-
May 31, 2021June 2021 Writer-in-Residence & Star Debut Novelist Samantha Garner on Skydiving, Kirtles, & Her Spy Passport
In a world where the gift of prophecy can turn you into a second class citizen, Freya loses everything when she has a dream foretelling her mother's death. Not only does she lose her mother when the premonition ...
-
July 08, 2016To the Moons, Alice
Earlier this week, on July 4, NASA announced that the spacecraft Juno had successfully entered Jupiter’s orbit. That it did so on Independence Day, and that NASA used the term “Mighty Jupiter” in ...
-
April 10, 2015
Revision and Sedgwick and Surprise
In my head my posts this month were going to unfold more linearly than they seem currently to be doing. I imagined each post, in advance of writing it (and an advance of writing any of the posts) as a ...
-
November 12, 2019
Keeping Momentum
After the initial idea for a story is grounded, but before there’s enough material for real revisions and edits, writers are somehow expected to get words on the page. This is intimidating! Here a couple ...
-
November 07, 2019
Where Ideas Begin
Questions every writer is familiar with: “Where did you get the idea?” or “How did you decide what to write about?”How did Denis Johnson decide to make a character obsessed with Elvis Presley’s ...
-
November 23, 2019Getting Over Getting Stuck
That Tiny Life, the title story of my collection, is about family—about distance that grows between families over time. I can tell you that now because the story is written. Writing it, I didn’t know ...
-
November 19, 2019Revision Part Two, Long Projects
Short stories, essays, or poems are wonderful to revise—I say this while I’m revising a longer project, but story length does make a difference. You can reading through a short draft in an afternoon, ...
-
November 29, 2019
Fiction, Memory, and Family
I reread books, often because a story or scene moved me and I want to know how the writer engineered it. It’s exciting to flip back to the first page and say, “of course! Of course the story ends ...
-
October 30, 2015
How to Start an Author Blog
A lot’s been made about “author platforms” over the past few years. Marketers love jargon and “platform” is just another word for presence.“The line between writer and creative entrepreneur ...
-
November 18, 2016
The Joy of Reading: discussion with Sandy Crawley of the National Reading Campaign
By Bianca Lakoseljac: OB Writer in Residence The importance of literacy in all cultures and societies cannot be underestimated. In Canada, it remains one of our main priorities. However, in some parts ...
