Category: On Writing
Here, There and Nowhere
As an American author, living in Britain, writing a novel about Florida, I am accustomed to existing in a semi-chronic state of dislocation. I have a mid-Atlantic accent which sounds to Brits like I’m right off the boat from Appalachia, but to Americans is pure Downton. Although 35 years of living in the UK have […]
The Inspiration behind Burnt Paper Sky
It took me many years to get around to writing my novel. Years of dabbling with one idea or another, and never really taking my ambition seriously. Years of letting life get in the way. So by the time I wrote that first sentence, I was in my early forties, I’d lived quite a lot, […]
Writing is Just a Day at the Beach
If you combined all five Great Lakes and poured them over the U.S., we’d be under 9.5 feet of water. I live less than 10 miles from Lake Michigan, the third largest lake, and almost never visit. I usually walk on familiar paths with predictable landscaping close to my neighborhood. Similar to my walking routine, I usually write […]
Emily Dickinson – Breathing Life into a Legacy
“She was not daily-bread. She was star-dust.” Martha Dickinson Bianchi on Emily Dickinson The Belle of Amherst’s poetry lives on. It’s been almost 130 years since Emily Dickinson’s death, and yet her works are as popular as ever, with over 1,600 scholarly articles published about her poetry in the last 25 years. Yet whilst her […]
Female Friendships in Literature
Men have dominated the friendship scene in books throughout literary history. Pip and Herbert, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, Frodo and Sam, Harry Potter and Ron Weasley, Romeo and Mercutio. The list goes on and on. Straight forward, no nonsense bromance at its best. Delve into the archives for a history of female friendships however, […]
Life Is A Boat
I’ve always wanted to be a writer. What stopped me will be familiar to anyone who’s ever been there: kids, relationships, work, life. During my twenties and thirties we’d travelled sporadically as a family, and moving around always seemed to unlock the words. I’d come back from each trip with a notebook full of jottings […]
The Novelistas – A Great Group of Writing Friends
The NW Novelistas (also known as Novelistas Ink) are a group of friends, who also happen to be writers, and meet each month for lunch, writerly gossip and mutual support. The group was founded over fifteen years ago by Sunday Times bestselling author Trisha Ashley, and as you can see from our latest books , […]
The Connection With Readers
When my debut novel was published, the component of the writing life furthest from my mind was arguably the most obvious. Readers. It wasn’t as if the novel was the first time my work that had made it into print. As a freelance journalist, I’d seen my byline for years, but the satisfaction it engendered […]
Uncovered: How I Left Hasidic Life
I was a Hasidic woman, from age fifteen to forty-five. You’ve seen them, the Jewish ultra-orthodox, the men in beards and hats and black clothes, the women in long modest covered, even covering their hair. I had an arranged marriage to a Hasidic man while still a teen and bore seven children, birth control forbidden. […]
Guilty Landscape
It started with the following tweet. Loving Someone Else's Conflict by @AlisonLayland. Gripping & sensitive portrayal of Balkans conflict and its aftermath #amreading — Louisa Treger (@louisatreger) April 7, 2015 I immediately knew I had to read this novel and a few weeks later I had it in my hands. To my surprise I found […]
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