This winter, in the absence of my spring-fall soundtrack of endless baseball games, I’ve gotten hooked on podcasts. I’ve been an on and off listener of This American Life for years, but outside of that radio show (and podcast), I hadn’t found any others that consistently engaged me. Now, to be fair, I am easily… Read more »
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Friday Reads: The Penderwicks in Spring
One of the ARCs I most coveted at ALA Midwinter in Chicago was the latest installment of Jeanne Birdsall’s insta-classic Penderwicks series, so there was a lot of internal–okay, and maybe a little external–squealing when I managed to snag a copy at the Random House booth. This is the first Penderwicks book I’ve actually “read.”… Read more »
Love, loss, and the writing life
As a child, the books that kept drawing me back were the ones in which a beloved character dies–Lois Lowry’s A Summer to Die, Sharon Creech’s Walk Two Moons, and countless others. I’m not entirely certain why I was drawn to these titles, as the juvenile me had, thankfully, very few direct encounters with death. And yet, I… Read more »
In honor of Galentine’s Day
My ten favorite gals from across the span of children’s and YA literature, in no particular order, who are all invited to my imaginary literary Galentine’s Day brunch: 1. Ruby Oliver (from E. Lockhart’s fabulous Ruby Oliver quartet) … Read more »
My Writing Community
Before I went to Vermont College of Fine Arts for my MFA, I didn’t have a writing community. I had friends who were willing to read my drafts, some of whom wrote, others that wanted to be helpful, but they didn’t exactly constitute a community. Or did they? What is a community, exactly? When I… Read more »
#8Terrible Titles
A huge thanks to fellow Sweet Sixteens author Kathy McMillan for tagging me in 8 Terrible Titles. It’s fairly common for books to have titles drawn from a phrase somewhere in the book. I personally struggle to find titles for what I’m working on, always secretly hoping the right phrase will crop up later and… Read more »
The 777 Challenge
I’ve been tagged by Nisha Sharma in the 777 Challenge. And no, as far as I know, a 777 is not an airplane. Actually, maybe it is an airplane and it looks pretty nice. ANYWAY… The 777 Challenge challenges the writer to post the first full seven lines of the seventh page of his or… Read more »
