Category: Contemporary Women Writers
Recommended Reads July
THE HOUSE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET, Jennifer Sklias-Gahan In The House in the Middle of the Street, Jennifer Sklias-Gahan conjures a haunting modern fairy tale of inheritance, secrets, and the creatures we invite into our lives. When Rebecca and her husband inherit a stately old home, they imagine it as the perfect place to […]
Why Fantasy Can Reveal Human Truths by Alison Levy
How does fantasy reveal human truths? It might seem counterintuitive to look for truth in a genre dependent on magic and the supernatural but fantasy lovers know better. Fantasy weaves tales of impossibility but this is just a means to explore the human condition. Realistic fiction might contain truth, but fantasy allows us to experience […]
When Reality Keeps Rewriting Your Fiction By Denise Fletcher
There’s a difficult balancing act in writing contemporary political crime fiction. The story must feel believable, but only just. The stakes need to sit right at the fringes of credibility without ever tipping over into the fanciful. The highs must be high. The lows low. The corruption must feel uncomfortable to read. And all the […]
My Writing Journey by Ellen Baker
I loved the feel of a pen gliding on paper as a kid. My mom, an English teacher, would bring me red and blue Papermate ballpoints from work. I was so driven to write that, at seven, after falling off my bike and breaking my right wrist, I scrawled out a messy story about it […]
June Recommended Reads
THE HOUSE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET, Jennifer Sklias-Gahan In The House in the Middle of the Street, Jennifer Sklias-Gahan conjures a haunting modern fairy tale of inheritance, secrets, and the creatures we invite into our lives. When Rebecca and her husband inherit a stately old home, they imagine it as the perfect place to […]
Understanding the Black Middle-Class—from Childhood Seeds to Sustained Sociological Inquiry By Angela Simms
I grew up in a middle-class Black family in the 1980s and 90s. My dad, Everitt, and my mom, Joan, raised me and my brother, Joshua, in Prince William County, Virginia, a suburb in the DMV, as we locals say (the DC, Maryland, and Virginia Metropolitan Area). As such, my sociological intuition regarding race and […]
It Takes a Village to Write a Novel by Martha Conway
I spend a lot of time alone. I like it. I like writing, I like doing research, I like thinking about what I’m writing, and I like making notes and scene lists. When I’m alone, I can dig deep to explore what is meaning to me, and how best to express it. But during the […]
My Writing Journey by Jane Costello
Way back in 2005, one day after submitting the first three chapters of what would become my debut novel, the phone rang. I was in my pyjamas. My three-month-old baby was in a bouncer next to me, having closed his eyes for the first time since 1 o’clock that morning. I hadn’t yet brushed my […]
On Writing The Butterfly In You by Sheri Mandell
The Butterfly in You began in a place I didn’t have language for at the time. From the outside, my life looked full…family, work, connection but internally, I felt a quiet, persistent loneliness that didn’t make sense. It wasn’t about being alone. It was about feeling disconnected from myself. I didn’t set out to write […]
The Real Toffee Factory Which Inspired my Books by Glenda Young
Many years ago, I wrote my debut novel Belle of the Back Streets which was published by Headline. It’s about a young woman who takes on her dad’s rag and bone round after he returns from WW1. She becomes responsible for looking after her family and faces hardship along the way, before I give her […]
Recent Comments