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November 09, 2015At the End of the "DEBRIS" Tour - Notes on My First Rodeo
It has been a few days since my last WIR post, but I promise that this is not because I was just playing video games and drinking beer in my Annex hobbit hole. In fact, I’ve been away at the Wild Writers ...
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September 27, 2018Coming to Voice
I worked on this piece while at a residency for BIPOC writers in the fall of 2017. I did not pick it up again when I returned. While workshopping it there, I was not convinced it captured what I was trying ...
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November 16, 2023Michael V. Smith on the Unexpected Journey of His Spectacular Seventh Book, Queers Like Me
Michael V. Smith's seventh book, the poetry collection Queers Like Me (Book*hug Press) was a surprise to him – it wasn't a book he expected to or even set out to write, but it's a gift to readers: ...
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October 31, 2017Halloween Special: Watching the World End with Peter Darbyshire
The title of Peter Darbyshire's Has the World Ended Yet? (Wolsak & Wynn) isn't false advertising - the stories, which contain all the wit, weirdness, and insight Darbyshire is known for, really do ...
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April 26, 2023Read an Excerpt from Rocco de Giacomo's Casting Out, a Poetic Memoir of Leaving Evangelical Life
Rocco de Giacomo's childhood was filled with TV faith healers, tense and frequent predictions of the rapture, and the dramatic and sometimes problematic practices of the extreme Pentecostal religious ...
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January 20, 2022"Are You Sick or Not?" Read an Excerpt from Shayne McGreal's Tense and Honest Debut, Anthony: A Composite Novel
Shayne McGreal's debut novel, Anthony: A Composite Novel (Guernica Editions) takes readers deep into the experience of the titular character and all his complications, weaving in and out of the various ...
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October 14, 2015
Should You Hire a Book Publicist?
In my last post, I wrote about some of the questions authors might want to get clear on when it comes to publicising their books, especially when it comes to understand a publisher’s commitment to promoting ...
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June 30, 2019Behind the Title: "Frying Plantain"
This is my last post for Open Book and I’ve been thinking about how I should end my June tenure as Writer in Residence. I landed on writing about the title of my book. I’ve been asked a few times ...
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January 24, 2017The Fraught Finish Line: Writers talk about the end of the book
The act of finally finishing a book comes with its own unique set of emotions. Some, of course, are fairly obvious—you spend weeks, months, and years of your life on a single project, writing and rewriting, ...
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December 12, 2019Book Therapy: Christy Ann Conlin’s Watermark
“It can always be worse.”-Christy Ann Conlin, Watermark When my grandmother’s memory started to go, she would occasionally become belligerent. The sweet woman I had grown up knowing, the one ...
