Columnists

How to Be Exceptionally Editable

When I first started writing children’s books, I possessed the strength and virility of a thousand strong and virile men. I believed in my ideas and held fast to them. While I was open to the editorial ...

What Do You Do When Your Disability Keeps You from Writing? What I Learned When I Launched a Brute Force Hack on my Brain

What Do You Do When Your Disability Keeps You from Writing? What I Learned When I Launched a Brute Force Hack on my Brain [1]A few years ago, I started hiking alone. I enjoyed escaping the city to one ...

(Cook)Book Therapy: County Heirlooms and Pandemic Cooking

“We hope you’ll try making some of these recipes, and we encourage you to find ways to make them your own. And we also hope this book inspires you, wherever you live, to find personal ways to connect ...

On Returning to Pen & Paper

The last time I wrote a story in a notebook must have been back in elementary school. I can remember handwriting in the thin cahiers we were given, double spacing my writing as instructed. Because I was ...

My Attraction to Gritty Stories

Not all stories are romantic or are tied up neatly at the end. Sometimes characters do not have a redeeming quality, and sometimes their experiences have made them hard and difficult to “save.” Gritty ...

How to Keep Dreaming in the Pandemic (or, How I Finished the Third Draft of my Novel)

Living in a pandemic means that we are facing death every day. Thinking about death pushed me into survival mode. I was stressed and depressed to the point of migraines and insomnia. I stopped doing things ...

The Power of a Great Title

 We all know about the power of a good cover, but what about the power of a great title?I’ve worked in publishing for nearly fifteen years now and attended upwards of seventy-five tradeshows across ...

Book Therapy: Still Here, and the Soothing Lure of Thrillers

  “No. This is not where I die, Clare thinks. I am not still here, still alive, only to die now."—Amy Stuart, Still Here I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how when I was in my late twenties ...

Finding Our Intentional Role in the Black Lives Matter Movement

As a Black professional in the publishing industry, I have been listening deeply to all of the conversations taking place around what folks can do to support the Black Lives Matter movement. Some of these ...

Five Tips for Writing About Tough Topics for Children and Teens

The best comedy often comes from life’s darker moments. Read up on any comedian and you’ll likely learn about their tumultuous beginnings, middles and ends. (Especially, on Twitter. Literally. At ...