Author Archive: Women Writers Women Books
Dutch by birth and serial emigrant, Barbara currently lives with her husband and daughter in a tiny village in Galicia, Spain, as basic and simple as can be. W Barbara's website.
Deborah L. King: On Writing
I was a fantastic liar as a child. For years I told people that four fingers on each hand were smashed and broken by a heavy window that I attempted to close when I was four years old. I told how I removed the screwdriver that held the window up. I described the pain and […]
Authors Interviewing Characters: Sarah Lariviere
Sarah Lariviere, Riot Act (Knopf / Random House, July 16, 2024) Sarah Lariviere’s debut novel, The Bad Kid, was an Edgar Award finalist. In the first book in her new YA series, Riot Act (Knopf / Random House, July 2024), an alternative history set in 1991 in an authoritarian America, theater kids in central Illinois […]
Writing Stories with Larger Meanings and Goals
By Sharon J. Wishnow On August 29, 2021 Hurricane Ida, a massive 150 mph category 4 storm slammed into Grand isle, Louisiana. Twelve hundred miles north in my home in Northern Virginia, I wept. Stories that move us and remain with us are the ones where we feel an emotional connection to the characters and […]
Choosing Your People By Rhett DeVane
By Rhett DeVane Friendships became vital during the pandemic. Now, as we crawl from our hideouts to physically interact, those connections are just as crucial. Recently, as I thought about the underlying themes in my novel Ditch Weed, two stood out: the importance of both heart-family and intragenerational friendships. I discovered these common threads not […]
Reasons to Love Developmental Editing
By Martha Carlson Developmental editing of fiction is work that brings me joy. Writers come to me with questions and uncertainty, and I use my experience, education, and training to bring them clarity and to recharge their enthusiasm for revising their work. I love hearing clients respond to my editing by saying “I have a […]
THE CURSE OF THE FLORES WOMEN by Angélica Lopes: Excerpt
THE CURSE OF THE FLORES WOMEN by Angélica Lopes translated by Zoë Perry In this haunting novel about the enduring bonds of womanhood, a young girl weaves together the truth behind her family history and the secrets that resonate through generations. Eighteen-year-old Alice Ribeiro is constantly fighting—against the status quo, female oppression in Brazil, and […]
Why I Wrote The Die
By Jude Berman It was the second Tuesday of November 2016. I was on a plane to Kauai, off to enjoy some R&R, having worked long days on the leadership team for HRC’s call center in the Bay Area. This was our celebratory moment, our time to feel the satisfaction—and relief—of a hard-earned victory. Except it […]
Mining the Past to Understand the Present
By Margaret Ann Spence The mid-century, before the baby-boomers became teenagers and horrified their parents, was, it is said, a time of stifling conformity. Strange. That is not how I remember this time at all. So, I wrote a memoir to set the record straight. In writing Cold War in a Hot Kitchen: a memoir […]
Novels Featuring Nature from a Feminine Perspective Are Essential for Our Times
There’s a long literary tradition of writing about natural and rural places. Many of the most well-known nature writers (Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Edward Abbey) wrote about nature and landscapes in ways that focused on a separation between pristine wilderness and human beings. Their writing conveys a feeling that the natural world is compromised […]
Side Effects Are Minimal: A Novel by Laura Essay, EXCERPT
Side Effects Are Minimal: A Novel by Laura Essay When ambitious attorney Claire Hewitt is asked to represent the Satoris, one of Philadelphia’s most prominent families, in a lawsuit over the death of their daughter, she is thrust into an opioid nightmare with deadly impact—and not for the first time. Claire’s guilt for not saving […]
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