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There won’t be any book reviews on the blog this week, mostly because we think you should all be at AWP in Chicago instead, buying—and attending readings of—as many books as you can. More importantly, though, if you happen to be at AWP, make sure you also take some time from your busy panel-going and…

“How do you write women so well? “I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability.” – As Good As It Gets. The above, often-cited quote about how to write female characters is quite funny, but at least for me, not true. As a man, I have not discovered a formula or…

Last week, I wrote about a disturbing trend I see in children’s movies. For this week’s post, I asked Randy Testa, Vice President of Education and Professional Development at Walden Media, to share some reflections on the process of adapting children’s books to screen. Randy Testa spent six years as a third grade teacher, earned…

I think a lot of book reviewers were smacked as children. Some of them must have at least been bullied. How else to explain their admiration for the ability not to flinch? Just look at the first page of results when you Google “unflinching book review.” At the British newspaper the Independent, for instance: “Book…

I was teaching undergraduate creative writing last fall, and toward the end of the semester a few of my students began asking me about how, exactly, one becomes a writer. They wanted to know what classes they should take, what sorts of things they should be thinking about or doing, who they should be talking…

The Last Holiday Gil Scott-Heron Grove Press, January 2012 384 pages $25.00 “The first change that takes place is in your mind. You have to change your mind before you change the way you’re livin’ and the way you move.” —1991 We remember him as the bluesologist, the godfather of rap. But for a long…

  You can potentially revise forever, as there’s always something that can be improved in your story. You could’ve added another dimension to a major or minor character. That word you used in paragraph 14, the third sentence…was that the right word? Or is there another one that is more precise? Did you give enough…

I first noticed it when my daughter was three years old, but I kept my mouth shut. Who was I to spoil her enjoyment of classic children’s movies? Maybe I was imagining the trend. Still, once I’d started seeing it, I saw it everywhere…right there in front of me, in movie after heartwarming children’s movie….

When you were in school, did you ever do one of those projects (usually in a foreign languageclass, where you’re getting the hang of basic vocabulary) in which you invent a family tree? You know, the works: Judi Dench is your grandmother, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is your dad, and so on. (If you didn’t,…