In many ways, The Dream Peddler is a love letter to L. M. Montgomery. I can’t think of any author whose work I spent more time reading during my adolescence. Eventually I collected every novel she ever wrote, and read many of them over and over. Back then I never gave any thought to the opportunities to read something new that I was squandering every time I picked…
I am so pleased to welcome memoirist Rae Theodore to the debutante ball this week! Rae visited us last year to do an interview for her debut, Leaving Normal: Adventures in Gender, and now she’s back with more great stories in her latest release, My Mother Says Drums Are for Boys: True Stories for Gender Rebels. I’ve known Rae since I first walked into a little writing group in Collegeville, PA…
As you all know by now, it’s a very exciting week for us here at the ball because we are celebrating our first book release! We all had the chance to read Devi’s book many months ago, and I must say, I was not one bit surprised by all the attention it has been getting, the many amazing lists it’s been on, and the literary world’s general excitement…
Aloha! Today my debut novel, The Atlas of Reds and Blues, is released — and tonight there’s a big book birthday party planned at Books Inc. in Mountain View, CA to celebrate the journey thus far. What began as a short story I wrote for a workshop in 2004 will have a life of its own, separate from me. It is a surreal feeling to look back and realize one…
I know you’ll all be shocked when I announce that I did not use comp titles in my query. I did not. I don’t think I was taking any particular stance in this; it’s just that I had a very hard time to come up with any, and very few agents actually required them. I described my book and sent my query off without them, and that seemed…
We are thrilled to welcome Nicole Chung to the Debutante Ball this week! Nicole Chung is the author of the memoir ALL YOU CAN EVER KNOW, which has been long-listed for the PEN Open Book Award and named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, NPR, The Boston Globe, TIME, Newsday, Library Journal, BuzzFeed, Real Simple, Paste Magazine, Chicago Public Library, and Seattle Public Library, among many others….
It’s coming home to me how often I start these posts with some comment about how I “don’t really do” whatever the topic of the week happens to be. I don’t live life with balance, I don’t dispense advice, I don’t blah blah blah. So let me hit you with a big surprise: I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. Truly, I don’t know that I’ve ever heard…
We are so thrilled to have Vancouver-based author and poet Chelene Knight as our guest on The Debutante Ball this week!! Chelene has been published in various Canadian and American literary magazines, and her work is widely anthologized. Chelene is currently the managing editor at Room magazine, and the 2018 Programming Director for the Growing Room Festival, and CEO of #LearnWritingEssentials. Chelene has been a judge for many writing contests…
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones** From the publisher: Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. In this deft exploration of…
I’m so thrilled to welcome my friend Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar to the Debutante Ball this week! Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar is the author of the novel, The Map of Salt and Stars (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 2018) and a member of the Radius of Arab American Writers (RAWI) and of American Mensa. Joukhadar’s work has appeared in Salon, The Paris Review Daily, The Kenyon Review, The Saturday Evening Post, and elsewhere, and…
