A debut year for any writer is exciting and joyful. And it can also be stressful, frightening, frustrating, and lonely. In my little corner of the world, it’s been hard for me to find other writers to connect with, although I’m lucky to have a small circle. Even if you live in a big city, though, with lots of different writers’ groups available, the odds of…
This week’s topic: “MFA vs NYC vs Choose Your Own Adventure.” Aloha. What if my writing education has been all three? I confess I’m a bit of a professional student. I love to be in a class, I love to have homework and get direction. The underlying motivation all throughout my writing life has been my desire to find community and gain skills, to chip away at a steady pace….
Aloha. I started writing poetry when I was nine years old. I remember writing in bursts. I had a wonderful teacher that year, and she was encouraging us to write beyond what the class assignments required us to do for the poetry unit. I first learned about haiku and sonnets and I was hooked! I wrote anywhere and anytime, and on any surface — from napkins to spiral notebooks. By…
…It’s my birthday, too. On Tuesday this week, when my book officially came out, I also turned forty-four years old. Now, I am not a person who believes in signs or astrology or anything like that, but I am sort of a neat freak. I like it when things line up. So this little coincidence really does please me no end. I’ve received many wonderful and thoughtful birthday gifts…
As a Deb this year, I’ve had the enormous privilege of working with four amazing, super-talented writers. And I’m so pleased to be able to finally sing the praises of Martine Fournier Watson’s debut novel, The Dream Peddler. I love this novel so much! It is dreamy, spooky, suspenseful. A sleepy town awakens when a young boy goes missing and the Dream Peddler arrives. The intertwining stories between the townspeople…
In my novel, The Atlas of Reds and Blues, I tried to capture the real world — the nonfiction world of the main character — from her earliest memories to the day she is shot by police and lays bleeding in her driveway. It’s a short novel. I tried to capture what she remembered, what she lived through — it was a pleasure to include such iconic moments as Woodstock…
Aloha! What I like about my debut novel, The Atlas of Reds and Blues: it’s short. Also, I think it’s full of suspense. What I love about writing in general: I get to tell stories, I get to try out new writing techniques. I get to read books about craft. I get to write poems. I get to attend writing conferences and workshops, where I meet other writers and poets…
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…
We are thrilled to have Rachel Howard as our guest author this week at The Debutante Ball! Rachel Howard’s novel THE RISK OF US, described by Jenny Offill as “an emotionally complex and amazingly suspenseful novel about love and fear,” will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on April 9th. Rachel earned her MFA in fiction from Warren Wilson College and is the author of a memoir, The Lost Night….
