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.
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 […]
Why Objects Matter in Historical Fiction by Patricia Furstenberg
A coat hanging beside a door can reveal more than a page of description. Who wore it? Who left it behind? Who still cannot bring themselves to let go? In Kate’s Letter (my historical fiction short story included in the anthology Courage: Tales of History, Mystery and Hope (out 17 June), the coat arrives before […]
The Story That Wouldn’t Let Go: Song of Belonging by Michelle St. Romain
I have loved books and writing for as long as I can remember. Books have been my constant companion and I’ve been writing in many forms since elementary school. At the age of 50, after decades of work in the nonprofit field, I decided that it was time to finally listen to the whispers from […]
Sheila Kimble-Haas on Writing Waiting for the Kick
The body in movement changes. Sometimes in small ways. Sometimes forever. My profession made movement inevitable. Midwife. Nurse practitioner. Humanitarian aid worker. I have landed in countries across Africa, on Native American reservations, in tiny towns throughout the American West, and north of the Arctic Circle. I have slept in mud huts, government housing, old […]
Judy Penz Sheluk: From Pink Slip to Published Author
Two things happened in the winter of 2003 that changed the course of my life. The first was learning my job was being eliminated. “Right-sizing the organization” was how the HR Manager referred to it, my manager nodding somberly, as if hearing the news for the first time. To be honest, I’d known it was […]
Remember My Name by Zelly Ruskin
Writing a book is hard. That’s the truth. Finishing it is a tremendous accomplishment. Fact. Taking that personal effort, the words you’ve created and taken great care to string together, and offering them to be viewed by the public? Terrifying. Glorious. Nerve-wracking. Exhausting. Still, we sit back down and subject ourselves to the process all […]
WRITING AND YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS: HOW TO FUEL YOUR INSPIRATION by Dr. Cristina LePort
Sometimes, when we write, the words arrive as if someone were dictating them, and we are not entirely aware of how it happens. This is what we call inspiration. Many writers think of inspiration as a mysterious force. It appears suddenly, like a gift from the gods, and disappears just as unpredictably. When it comes, […]
The Story Behind THE HAPPINESS PATHWAY by Charu Moorjani
People kept telling me how beautiful I looked on my wedding day. I couldn’t feel any of it. My wedding day should have been the happiest day of my life. Everyone kept telling me it was. The venue was spectacular, an enormous outdoor farmhouse, the stage dressed like a movie set with performers costumed as […]
How I Became a Writer in Japan By Suzanne Kamata
I have wanted to be a writer since I was a little girl in Michigan. As a kid, I wrote stories on demand for my classmates, and produced and distributed what we would now call a zine to the people in my neighborhood. Later, I wrote features on topics as diverse as shoplifting and the […]
Joy Conditioning: How Writing About My Brother Brought Him Back By Larkin McPhee
The story of my brother, Charles McPhee, was a film waiting to happen. The good-looking, charismatic host of the nationally syndicated radio program The Dream Doctor Show slurs his words on the radio. Listeners call in to ask if he is drunk. At age forty-four, Charles’s life is changed forever, along with his family, when […]
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