Suffice it to say, we were a little bit crazy! I had the privilege of “teaching” a creative-writing class in Ginnie’s and my home this winter. The reason I put “teaching” in quotation marks is, as anyone who’s ever taught creative writing knows, you don’t really teach creative writing, you just get out of the […]
These three common writing mistakes can keep your first novel from realizing its full potential. Debby Hudson / Unsplash I often get two responses when I tell people that I write books. The first is, “Oh, I don’t think I could ever do that!” The second is just the opposite. “You know, I had an […]
When I (Abē Levine) started interning here at NPR, I worked nights as a wedding server. And one thing always made those shifts longer: speeches. Those toasts honoring the newlyweds were often stuffy, over-rehearsed, and thirsting for personality. Are you a middle/high school teacher or student podcaster? Learn more about NPR’s Student Podcast Challenge here: […]
If there is a past tense in the principal clause, this must be followed by a past tense in the dependent clause. Ergo, there must be no conflict or incongruity. This is called “tense attraction.” The tenses in the English language unnerve many writers, especially the younger ones. They have the tendency to shift tenses […]
Collaboration is vital to filmmaking — no one can make one completely alone. For many of 2022’s screenplay nominees, that process began on the page with a team of individuals whose efforts completed and complemented one another to ensure that the story being told was as thoughtful, fully realized and emotionally evocative as possible. But […]
I cannot stop writing poems! … They come from the vocabulary of woods and animals and earth. From a letter from Sylvia Plath to her mother, 1956 Popular perceptions of Sylvia Plath tend to dwell on a deeply troubled version of the young poet due to her well-documented difficulties with depression and the morbid imagery […]
New Plymouth author Emma Hislop, (Kāi Tahu), will have her debut collection of short fiction, Ruin, and other stories, published by Te Herenga Waka in March. She is now working on her first novel. Why did you decide to start writing? Writing is my way of working things out. I write to work out how […]
New books from Kevin Jared Hosein, Pilar Quintana, Nona Fernández and Patrick Modiano. Kevin Jared Hosein’s novel HUNGRY GHOSTS (327 pp., Ecco, $30) takes place on a sugar estate in 1940s Trinidad and the language is as lush, moody and thrilling as the landscape. On the hill is the house of Dalton and Marlee Changoor, […]
After over a decade of judging thousands of short stories in our national writing competitions, our Writers College judges have compiled a list of eight tips to help you onto the shortlist. What exactly is a short story? A short story is not a commentary on current affairs, an article about collecting clocks or a […]
We talked to the author of one of the most banned books in the country about the unique power of books and why Black queer voices are so threatening to those trying to silence them. Over the past two years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of books being banned or challenged […]
