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September 18, 2020How writing rituals saved me from quitting as a writer
I define my writing ritual as a series of unique actions taken that tells my brain it’s writing and creation time. This is part preparation, part boundary-setting, part protective aura. I know that ...
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December 30, 2020Just because I don’t “look” like an editor...
Just because I don’t “look” like an editor... I remember the first time I went to pick up the mail from our post office box, when I was the managing editor at Room magazine, and was told by one ...
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July 30, 2018
On Staying Hungry
One night after a reading years ago, before any of us had published a book, I and another writer I know gave a third writer friend a pretty hard time about not wanting to submit stories to magazines. ...
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October 25, 2022Guest Essay: A.G. Pasquella on Slipstream, New Weird, and the Wonderfully Strange History of "Weird Fiction"
A.G. Pasquella knows weird. He can do straight-laced and tightly plotted fiction, like his celebrated Jack Palace noir series, but he's equally known for his experimental, offbeat, and wonderfully wacky ...
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July 30, 2018
The Part of It You Don't See
If you’ve been reading my dispatches over the last month, you might have inferred that making a go of it as a writer is hard. Bending reality, memory, knowledge and experience into believable fiction, ...
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February 17, 2022"Sometimes People Think Children Just Bounce Back" Sarah Howden on Her Thoughtful New Picture Book Helping Kids Navigate Loss
Talking to kids about tough subjects, including grief and loss, is one of the most disorienting parts of being a parent or caregiver. Children need a way to navigate sadness, but the language and concepts ...
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July 21, 2018
You Just Need to Write a Bestseller
If you’re a writer and you’re not rich and famous—so what I mean is, if you’re a writer—you’ve heard this one, often enough from someone who doesn’t write fiction or maybe even read it.Have ...
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April 07, 2023I Just Got Published - So, Why Don't I Feel Great?
When I was 18, I resolved to be a published writer one day. It was something I’d dreamed of even before then. As a younger teenager I wrote simple books inspired in varying degrees by The Outsiders. ...
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December 12, 2025Read an Excerpt from CAN POSTERS KILL? by Jerry Faivish (with Kathryn Cole)
Propaganda shapes people’s beliefs in ways that are often hard to see until long after the damage is done. The featured book today, Can Posters Kill? (Second Story Press), looks at how hateful messages ...
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August 11, 2021Read an Excerpt from Debut Novelist Pamela Korgemagi's The Hunter and the Old Woman, Featuring a Literal Cougar as Its Protagonist
Pamela Korgemagi's debut novel The Hunter and the Old Woman (House of Anansi Press) features a protagonist unlike almost any other. The titular Old Woman is not a woman at all — she's a cougar, living ...
