Category: Contemporary Women Writers
Why, As A Woman, I Write About Famous Men
“Why do you write from the perspective of artists, instead of women, perhaps from the viewpoint of a maid?” The man who asked this question was a professor emeritus of art history at a top-tier university, which I won’t name here. (Note that he didn’t qualify the word artist with “male.” Apparently, that qualifier is […]
Practicing Inspiration
Can you really practice inspiration? We writers all want it, we all seek it, but mostly it seems to arrive on its own schedule, out of nowhere—a tiny light in the distance, or a sudden burst of joy, the sigh of relief and ahh, now I see! Here’s the right word, the missing image, the […]
Interview With Barbara Probst
Barbara Probst’s novel QUEEN OF THE OWLS (April 2020) is the powerful story of a woman’s search for wholeness, framed around the art and life of iconic painter Georgia O’Keeffe. QUEEN OF THE OWLS has been selected as one of the 20 most anticipated books of 2020 by Working Mother and will be the May […]
When Did You Learn To Read?
When did you learn to read? It’s a question a lot of people get asked. For some, it was before they started formal schooling, often at their mother’s knee. Others learned later. Perhaps it was more of a struggle due to dyslexia or Irlens syndrome or visual problems. For many of us, reading is one […]
My obsession with Emily Warren Roebling and the Brooklyn Bridge
She built a monument, then was lost in its shadow. My obsession with Emily Warren Roebling and the Brooklyn Bridge I grew up in northern New Jersey, and New York City was like Oz to us. Not being able to afford the fancy restaurants and shows, we did the free stuff. My father loved to […]
Living and Writing and Faith: Dispatch from Self-Isolation, Day 30
All I want to do is have coffee with my parents under a shade tree. It’s day 30 of self-isolating in the era of Covid-19. I’m sixty-five and immunosuppressed (a double-organ transplant patient) so I started drawing back during my spring break from N.C. State. The first week, I went out for groceries and once […]
CHARIS IN THE WORLD OF WONDERS: Excerpt
“When I swung over that windowsill, everything changed for me. We are meant to go in and out of doors in civilized style, but my mother bade me climb into woodsy wildness and a darkness flushed with crimson light and torches …” And so begins the long journey through the wilderness as Charis is forced […]
Unsealing Divorce
While researching the third novel in a trilogy for the Durant Family Saga, I tracked down and unsealed a divorce file from 1898. After this, I was left with a dilemma, what to do and how to unfurl the story about a man who covered up his adultery in an attempt to protect his reputation […]
Tinseltown or Bust? The Hollywood Dream, Part One
As writers, we often exist on dreams. We have to, or we wouldn’t write at all. The dream of a finished book, a published book, an agent, a publishing deal… It’s a common shared goal and for many of us, it does evolve from a dream into reality. But what about the Hollywood dream? How […]
Writing and Life, Tracy Rees
What do we really need to write? The perfect pen? A luxurious notebook? Silence? Chocolate? I had many such ideas when I was an aspiring writer. Now that I’m writing my sixth book to contract, I’m far more pragmatic. I think most writers have a perfect writing day. It might begin with a run before […]
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