Category: Contemporary Women Writers
The Accidental Novelist
I didn’t plan on becoming a novelist, but I am one, thanks to a deathbed promise I made to fulfill someone else’s dream. Here’s how that happened. In the 1980s and 1990s, my mother, Rona S. Zable, had four young adult and middle grade books published by major New York publishers. Those novels—Love at the […]
Small Press Pages July 2025
Small Press Pages July 2025 Despite the evolution of the publishing industry to involve various players besides large publishers (i.e. hybrid, independent, and small publishers as well as digital and audio books), books released by large presses still garner most of the attention. This column hopes to shed light on some of the diverse books […]
Hooked On Tragic Love Stories
By Anastasia Rubis I have a friend whose fiancé was paralyzed in a skiing accident and later died of complications. She still can’t speak his name, though this happened a decade ago, and she refers to him simply as my love. When I told her I was writing a novel about Oriana Fallaci, the legendary […]
Authors Interviewing Characters: Diane Papalia Zappa Interviews the Love of her Life
When Bob and Diane met, it was love at first sight. For both of them. In her memoirs, The Married Widow: My Journey with Bob Zappa and its companion piece, Dear Bobby: My Grief Journey, Diane describes the evolution of their relationship from their meeting in 1986 to their marriage in 2015 and his passing […]
Momentous and Mundane: Spending Time with Writer’s Block
By Callie J. Smith I dread writer’s block. Unfortunately, my most recent novel, The Joy of a Field, left me spending more time with writer’s block than either of the other novels in my Sacred Grounds trilogy. I kept imagining the block creeping out from some opaque corner of my mind where it lived, always […]
The Power of Story and Community
The power of story and community It’s clear that the effects of climate change are already being felt around the world – storms, wildfires, droughts, species extinctions – and also that governments are failing to address it with anything like the urgency that’s needed. One of the best ways to spread the word about the […]
Writing ‘A Biography of Níkę – ‘Bàtà Mi á Dún Ko Ko Kà’
Kofo Adeleke As an avid reader, storywriter and collector of books since childhood, I actually believe that the desire to write a book had always been within me. But because it happened rather later in life the urge was probably not quite as burning as for some, although I did for a number of years […]
Backstory of My Twin in Budapest
Backstory of My Twin in Budapest Five years ago, my cousin was looking at a stack of old photos at a friend’s house. An image of her friend’s grandmother caught her eye because she thought the lady looked like me, so she sent me a copy of the picture to see what I thought. The […]
There Will Be A Quiz
By Kate Woodworth “Remember mud football on the quad?” our Trinity College (Hartford) reunion chair, Henry Bruce wrote last fall when trying to drum up enthusiasm for our 50th. “The Sha-Na-Na concert?” Nope. In my four years of college, I attended zero sporting events. I don’t know what mud football is and have no desire […]
News From the Arctic Circle
By Claudia Hinz It is one my favorite emails in my inbox even though I can’t bring myself to read the whole letter: News from the Arctic Circle. The subject line alone sends a chill up my spine. The frozen nostril zing of a wild adventure on the top of the world. A place I […]
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