Category: Contemporary Women Writers
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 […]
How Emotional Posture Came to Be By Dr. Colette D. Sinclair, PhD
The Events that Propelled me to Examine Energetic States to Create Inner Alignment By outward measure, I had done everything right. By the time I was twenty-seven, I was established, at the top of a career I had worked toward without pause. I had followed every prescribed rule, checked every box society handed me, and […]
Origin Story: From Fact to Fiction in How Long a Shadow by Cheryl A. Ossola
In any family history, secrets, murky half-truths, and even full-out fictions spiff up the stories one generation hands down to the next. How much we know about those truths and lies depends on how doggedly we dig—and how determined the truth-holders are to hide what’s real. In my family’s case, relatives banished to the shadows, […]
Surviving the Ever Changing World of Publishing by Sara Ackerman
I was that person who believed that once you landed an agent, and then a book deal, you had officially earned a golden ticket to success and forever book deals. Back in 2016, it was my fourth manuscript that got me an agent, and that book, Island of Sweet Pies and Soldiers, released in early […]
The Inspiration Behind Rules for Mothers by Julie Swendsen Young
I was twelve when my stay-at-home, farmwife mother took a parttime clerical job in our small, very rural county. The decision for her to get a job wasn’t spoken of in front of my sisters and me, but it was likely for financial reasons. Our tiny subsistence farm provided all the food we needed but […]
AI Spams and Scams: Caveat Emptor by Jane Loeb Rubin
There is a particular, personal cruelty to scamming authors. Most of us have poured years of our lives — sometimes entire decades — into crafting stories, perfecting prose, and building the kind of literary reputation that might, just might, justify a seat at one of the country’s premier book festivals. We are not naive, but […]
My Journey Towards Writing “Leaving the Shore: Experiencing Poetry as Prayer” by Colette Lafia
One spring afternoon, I was browsing my inbox when an email from my agent popped on screen. The news was good. Monkfish Press had accepted my proposal for a collection of poetry that would include practices and prompts for deep reflection and prayer. At that point in time, I only had a handful of poems […]
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