Tag: women writers
Maryam Diener: On Writing
At school in Iran, I was drawn to the works of the poet Forough Farrokhzad. Modernist and revelatory, her poetry was a turning point in the Iranian literary world. She used the written word to explore personal emotions in a world where it was taboo for women to write about their inner life. For hundreds […]
What Titles Tell Us
When I started writing my memoir almost ten years ago, I thought I was writing a story about our family breeding our Portuguese Water Dog, Spray, as our last family adventure before my older daughter, Maggie, left for college. I had kept a blog about the dog and puppies, at my husband’s suggestion, and about […]
How I Develop My Characters
By nature, I am a people person, so, developing characters is where I begin when planning a story. Once the characters are created, the plot is built around them, not the reverse. So, how do I develop my characters? All my characters are based on people I have encountered in my career as a ladies’ […]
Prologues & Epilogues, Oh My!
by Abigail Owen I have heard over the years from various readers that they skip prologues or epilogues. Skip them? How? Why? Maybe that reader had a bad experience? Or just thinks that a prologue or epilogue is information they don’t need? Do prologues and/or epilogues fit with or enhance every single story? Or course […]
August: Reading With Rochelle Weinstein
Hello Readers & Friends, North Carolina is a memory, and we’re back in Miami where the days alternate between steamy sun and lots of afternoon showers. But who minds the rain when you have a great book on hand? Here’s what I read in August…all that plus edits for We Are Made of Stars! Here’s […]
Authors Interviewing Characters: Cynthia Reeves
Cynthia Reeves’s novel The Last Whaler is an elegiac meditation on the will to survive. Tor, a beluga whaler, and his wife, Astrid, a botanist specializing in Arctic flora, are stranded during the dark season of 1937-38 at his remote whaling station in the Svalbard archipelago when they misjudge ice conditions and fail to rendezvous […]
Authors Interviewing Characters: Michelle McGill-Vargas
AMERICAN GHOUL You can’t kill someone who’s already dead. That’s what Lavinia keeps telling her jailer after—allegedly—killing her mistress, Simone Arceaneau. But how could Simone be dead when she was taking visitors shortly before? And why was her house always so dark? Lavina, a recently freed slave, met Simone, a recently undead vampire, by chance […]
Authors Interviewing Characters: Patricia Leavy, author of After the Red Carpet
“After the Red Carpet is a modern masterpiece and a perfect romance narrative from the more literary side of the book world.” —Readers’ Favorite, 5-star review “Leavy’s writing shines in its ability to delve into the emotional intricacies of a relationship, offering readers a glimpse into the characters’ heartfelt explorations of trust, understanding, and mutual support. […]
Strong Female Authors and Characters: They Can’t Ban Us All!
By Martha Engber If you follow my blog (MarthaEngber.com), you’ll know that when the Utah State Board of Education in the United States banned 13 books from all public schools (New York Times, Aug 6, 2024), I checked the list of books. All but one were written by strong female authors, and all involve strong […]
Turning Trauma into Fiction for Young Adults
In 2017, I published my young adult urban fantasy novel *The Great and the Small*, a story delving into themes of good and evil that had intrigued me since childhood. The first edition primarily followed Ananda, a troubled teenage girl, and Fin, a young tunnel rat who, as a loyal follower of his uncle, the […]
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