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.
On Writing ALL I KNOW
When I started writing All I Know, I did not intend to focus on psychology. I set out to write a coming-of-age love story that was complicated and real, and I certainly hope I did that. Yet as a psychotherapist, mental health issues are always on my mind, so they were bound to show up […]
Authors Interviewing Characters: Susan Weissbach Friedman
KLARA’S TRUTH It is May 2014, and Dr. Klara Lieberman—forty-nine, single, professor of archaeology at a small liberal arts college in Maine, a contained person living a contained life—has just received a letter from her estranged mother, Bessie, that will dramatically change her life. Her father, she learns—the man who has been absent from her […]
You’re Never Too Old to Be Your Seven-Year-Old Self
By Saki Tanaka One of my favorite things about introducing myself as a picture book author-illustrator is hearing: “I’ve always wanted to write a children’s book!” Nothing delights me more than meeting kindred spirits and fellow storytellers. A common question that follows is: “How long did it take you to make your book?” When I […]
WRITING OUTSIDE THE LINES
By Jean Trounstine Although I have never been locked up behind bars, I am connected deeply to those who are. I am connected because I have spent more than thirty years interrogating justice—directing plays in prison, writing books and articles about prison, and working to upend a flawed system. In 1987, I was the first […]
How Did the Bread of Dreams Come To Be?
by Dorette Snover In my upcoming companion cookbook, The Bread of Dreams, I have an alluring stuffing for Roman duck, a wonderful savory dish which uses rye berries. But before rye berries there was Laramie, Wyoming and Trolls, and Black Rye Bread. The story of this recipe traces the season of rye from flour back […]
Finding My Inspiration: How I Wrote The Girl Who Tried to Change History
By Melissa Kaplan It was a rainy afternoon in the spring of 2009. I was sitting in a café, reading a novel (World War Two historical fiction, my favorite), and as my eyes traced the words on the page, my mind began to wander. Suddenly, seemingly out of the blue, a question popped into my […]
How I Almost Had Dinner with Dave Letterman, and Walked Away
By Deanne Stillman Back in 2019, comedy writer Nell Scovell wrote a piece about a conversation with Dave Letterman. It was a follow-up to an essay she had written 10 years before, in which she talked about walking away from a job as a writer for the Letterman show because of sexual favoritism — the now-familiar […]
On Writing Your Forgotten Sons by Anne Montgomery
In 2019, I traveled to Baltimore at the request of a dear friend. She was facing a delicate, possibly life-changing surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and asked that I stand in as her healthcare power of attorney. The night before the operation, Gina handed me a ziplock bag. Inside I found a packet of yellowed […]
WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA: How Authors Find Ideas for Their Novels
by Susie Orman Schnall, author of ANNA BRIGHT IS HIDING SOMETHING In Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert talks about how ideas can be understood as living things. That a stagnant idea in one author’s imagination can “travel” to another author to become fully realized. Such was the case when Gilbert struggled with an idea for a novel […]
Authors Interviewing Characters: Mae Bennett
A grumpy, rich recluse meets his match in this steamy Beauty and the Beast retelling—with a Succession twist. Barely Even Friends by Mae Bennett, on sale now from Alcove press, is a fresh spin on a tale as old as time. Bellamy Price has just been offered the job of a lifetime: lead contractor on the restoration of the mysterious and sprawling […]
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