Tag: women writers
On Story Work: The Art of Living (and Writing) the Questions
By GG Renee Hill “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live […]
Imagining Mary Cassatt: Behind the Curtain of The Cassatt Sisters
by Lisa Groen When writing a novel about a historical figure like Mary Cassatt, a member of the larger Impressionist collective, it can be difficult to decide who to include as main characters of her story. All the Impressionists would be interesting to write about, not to mention her famous teachers in Paris. To make […]
When A Character Takes Over Your Novel
By Gabi Coatsworth I needed a ghost. I’d just published my debut novel, A Beginner’s Guide to Starting Over, and was beginning my follow-up. I was about halfway into writing the second one when I began to receive feedback from readers about the first. One of the things they commented on was how much they […]
Developing Complex Characters
By Mary Alice Stephens My book, Uncorked: A Memoir of Letting Go and Starting Over (Sibylline Press, August 2025), explores my search for identity after ending a 30-year abusive relationship with alcohol. The central conflict is between two opposing parts of my personality: Fun Mary and Sober Mary. During my drinking days, I was Fun […]
Cowboys, Rodeos, and a Stray Dog
By Nan Reinhardt I have to confess that I panicked when my publisher Jane Porter asked me to move from River’s Edge, my little town on the Ohio River to Marietta, Montana. I mean, holy schnikeys! Frankly, I’d never been to the West before and I knew nothing about cowboys. Oh, I’d spent lots of […]
Robin Merle Interviews Tina from A Dangerous Friendship
A DANGEROUS FRIENDSHIP Desperate to redefine herself after a failed marriage, Tina feels herself come alive when she’s around Spike, a beautiful, seemingly invulnerable woman. It’s the 1980s in New York City, and Tina latches on to Spike as someone who can save her from mediocrity and show her how to be the kind of […]
How “Searching For Silky” Came To Be
By Nancy Taylor “Searching For Silky” began when I told my mother about a certain cat I had met at my workplace. I was very excited about this particular little animal, which was unexpected since I don’t actually like cats. I find them to be inscrutable and aloof. My mother said I should write a book about […]
Authors Interviewing Characters: Andrea Simon
By Andrea Simon DID YOU HAVE THE LIFE YOU WANTED Did You Have the Life You Wanted? spans the generations from 1968 to 2019, highlighting the late 1960s to 1970s when diverse female friends come of age against the turbulent backdrop of racially charged school strikes, the Stonewall Inn and Attica uprisings, and the nascent feminist movement. […]
Inspired By, Not About
By Barbara Viniar “…She opened the bag of chocolate kisses her mother had insisted on buying her…and somehow life did feel a little easier.” That must be where I get it from, I thought as I wrote yet another scene in which Fannie indulges her sweet tooth. And then I had to laugh at myself. […]
Meditations from a Walmart Parking Lot
By Sarah May I wake to the sound of an engine revving, bass thumping. Groggy light streams in around the shades from the window at the foot of the bed. The jostling of shopping carts comes next, metal scraping against metal. Just another morning at a Walmart parking lot. After I make my coffee and […]
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