A Writer's Moment: 'A sower of verses'

A Writer's Moment: 'A sower of verses':   “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”  – Jorge Luis Borges   Born in Argentina in August of 1899, Borges w...

'A sower of verses'

 

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” – Jorge Luis Borges

 

Born in Argentina in August of 1899, Borges was one of the 20^th Century’s most important writers and perhaps the most important figure in Spanish-language literature since Cervantes.  He wrote numerous short stories and essays but said he most loved poetry.  He wrote his first poems as a boy and published his first book of poems at age 23.   Over his lifetime (he died at age 86) he wrote thousands of poems.    For Saturday's Poem, from his collection Poems of the Night, here is Borges’,

 

The Forging

Like the blind man whose hands are precursors
that push aside walls and glimpse heavens
slowly, flustered, I feel
in the crack of night
the verses that are to come.
I must burn the abominable darkness
in their limpid bonfire:
the purple of words
on the flagellated shoulder of time.
I must enclose the tears of evening
in the hard diamond of the poem.
No matter if the soul
walks naked and lonely as the wind
if the universe of a glorious kiss
still embraces my life.
The night is good fertile ground
for a sower of verses.

A Writer's Moment: 'Evoking sensation through your words'

A Writer's Moment: 'Evoking sensation through your words':   “Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.”   -- E.L. Doctorow Born in New York City in 1931, Doctorow was one of our great...

'Evoking sensation through your words'

 

“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.”  -- E.L. Doctorow

Born in New York City in 1931, Doctorow was one of our greatest crafters of historical fiction.  His 12 novels, 3 collections of short fiction and stage play – led by his multiple award-winning novel Ragtime – won every major writing award over a nearly 7-decade career (he died in 2015).

Doctorow said that while it is the historian's place to tell us about a time or era in history, it is the historical novelist's role to tell us how we would act and feel if we lived in that time.  His characters exemplified Ernest Hemingway's admonition that when writing a novel, the writer should create living people – “people, not characters.  A character is a caricature.”

It is not acceptable to be “mostly right,” Doctorow admonished.  Writers must be completely right in what we share if we are to remain true to our craft.

"Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader,” Doctorow said.  “Not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”

A Writer's Moment: Just an entertaining good time

A Writer's Moment: Just an entertaining good time: “I think good art should always be entertaining, or at least give pleasure of some sort. And my chief goal as a writer has always been to te...

Just an entertaining good time

“I think good art should always be entertaining, or at least give pleasure of some sort. And my chief goal as a writer has always been to tell a good story and give my readers a good time.” – Kenneth Oppel

Born in Port Alberni, Canada in August of 1967, Oppel has had a distinguished career as a children’s and young adult writer.  He holds the distinction of winning both Canada’s Governor General's Literary Prize and the American Library Association’s (ALA) Printz Honor Award twice, for the books Airborn and The Times.

 

Oppel, who now lives in Toronto, started writing as a teen, penning a humorous story about a boy addicted to video games, leading to his first book Colin's Fantastic Video Adventure published just as he was starting college.  While at the University of Toronto he wrote his second bestseller, The Live-Forever Machine, in a creative writing class.    His more recent works include Skybreaker, named the ALA’s Best Book for Young Adults and his 2022 novel Ghostlight.  

While his books are popular reads, only one has made it onto film -- a TV show based on his Silverwing series.  He thinks it’s a rare possibility for books to become movies.

 

“Realistically,” he said, “the chance of any book becoming a film is (very) slim.”

A Writer's Moment: 'It begins with listening'

A Writer's Moment: 'It begins with listening':   “I believe in communication; books communicate ideas and make bridges between people.”  – Jeanette Winterson   Born in Manchester, Eng...

'It begins with listening'

 

“I believe in communication; books communicate ideas and make bridges between people.” – Jeanette Winterson

 

Born in Manchester, England on this date in 1957, Winterson first won acclaim for her book Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, a semi-autobiographical novel about a sensitive teenage girl rebelling against conventional values.

 

Winterson won a basketful of awards for Oranges, then followed that by winning the prestigious John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for The Passion, a novel set in Napoleonic Europe.  Among Winterson’s recent bestsellers is the novel Frankissstein: A Love Story inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and long-listed for the prestigious Booker Prize. 

 

Also a broadcaster and a professor of creative writing, Winterson has been lauded for depiction of sound in her stories, something she attributes to having a keen ear.

 

“Everything in writing begins with language,” she said, “and language begins with listening.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Don't get sucked into drama'

A Writer's Moment: 'Don't get sucked into drama':   “Because Dad was famous, I was so used to being identified as 'John Huston's daughter' that I couldn't think of myself as ...

'Don't get sucked into drama'

 

“Because Dad was famous, I was so used to being identified as 'John Huston's daughter' that I couldn't think of myself as anyone else.” – Allegra Huston

Born in London on this date in 1964, Huston has moved out of her famous family’s shadow through her success as an award-winning writer and editor.     Her novels Say My Name and Love Child: A Memoir of Family Lost and Found were multiple award winners, the former also made into an Academy Award winning movie.   She also is the writer and producer of the award-winning short film Good Luck, Mr. Gorski.     

 

London critic Lynn Barber wrote in The Telegraph that, "Huston is an absolutely outstanding writer, incapable of writing a dull sentence."   In collaboration with the poet James Navé, she conducts writing workshops called “The Imaginative Storm,” a multi-day program which they have taught in many places around the world.   And she’s written two books for writers: How to Edit and Be Edited, and How to Read for an Audience.

 

Her advice for writers is to the point. “Don't waste time on what's not important. Don't get sucked into the drama. Get on with it: don't dwell on the past. Be a big person; be generous of spirit; be the person you'd admire.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Excelling at a slow, steady award-winning pace'

A Writer's Moment: 'Excelling at a slow, steady award-winning pace': “Reviewers have called my books 'novels in verse.' I think of them as written in prose, but I do use stanzas. Stanza means 'room...

'Excelling at a slow, steady award-winning pace'

“Reviewers have called my books 'novels in verse.' I think of them as written in prose, but I do use stanzas. Stanza means 'room' in Latin, and I wanted there to be 'room' - breathing opportunities to receive thoughts and have time to come out of them before starting again at the left margin” – Virginia Euwer Wolff

Born in Portland, OR on this date in 1937, Euwer Wolff is author of the award-winning series Make Lemonade, featuring a 14-year-old girl named LaVaughn who babysits for the children of a 17-year-old single mother.  True Believer, the second in the three-book series (they’re not really a trilogy), won her the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, and in 2011 she was the recipient of the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children's Literature, recognizing all of her writing.

 

Wolff said she uses her own teenage years as a foundation for her work.  “The teenage years are the years to examine faith - the need to be independent and the need to be anchored,” she said. “It’s a time to ask, ‘Who made all this? And what do I have to do with it?’” 

  

Slow and steady is her self-proclaimed writing pace and she says she is “several years in” on a new (as yet untitled) novel whose characters are “brave, foolish and goofy . . . and don’t know what a Kardashian is.”

 

“No one writes as slowly as I do, I'm convinced.  It's so hard for me . . . I make decisions at a snail's pace,” she said.  “I work early in the morning before my nasty critic gets up – he rises about noon.  By then, I've put in much of a day's work.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Innocense of heart, violence of feeling'

A Writer's Moment: 'Innocense of heart, violence of feeling':   “Innocence of heart and violence of feeling are necessary in any kind of superior achievement: The arts cannot exist without them.”  –  Lo...

'Innocense of heart, violence of feeling'

 

“Innocence of heart and violence of feeling are necessary in any kind of superior achievement: The arts cannot exist without them.” –  Louise Bogan

 

Born in Maine in August of 1897 (she died in 1970) Bogan published her first book Body of This Death: Poems, in 1923.  She wrote several bestselling books of poetry then became the longtime poetry editor for The New Yorker magazine.  Named U.S. Poet Laureate in 1945, her works are still widely shared and studied.   For Saturday’s Poem, here is Bogan’s,

                                         Roman Fountain

Up from the bronze, I saw
Water without a flaw
Rush to its rest in air,
Reach to its rest, and fall.

Bronze of the blackest shade,
An element man-made,
Shaping upright the bare
Clear gouts of water in air.

O, as with arm and hammer,
Still it is good to strive
To beat out the image whole,
To echo the shout and stammer
When full-gushed waters, alive,
Strike on the fountain's bowl
After the air of summer.

A Writer's Moment: 'Small Stories; Big Impact'

A Writer's Moment: 'Small Stories; Big Impact':   “I have a feeling that books are a lot like people - they change as you age, so that some books that you hated in high school will strike ...

'Small Stories; Big Impact'

 

“I have a feeling that books are a lot like people - they change as you age, so that some books that you hated in high school will strike you with the force of a revelation when you're older.” – Lauren Groff

 

Born in Cooperstown, NY (home of the Baseball Hall of Fame) on Aug. 23, 1978 Groff writes both novels and short stories and is a frequent contributor to magazines like The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly and Ploughshares.  Her debut novel The Monsters of Templeton won accolades from Amazon and the San Francisco Chronicle, and her bestselling novel Fates and Furies was nominated for the National Book Award.    Her most recent novel, The Vaster Wilds, also has been a multiple award-winner.

 

A graduate of both Amherst College and UW-Madison, she was recently named by Time Magazine as one of America’s 100 most influential people.  A Guggenheim (“Genius”) grant recipient, she became both a book writer and seller last year when she opened a bookstore in Gainesville, FL.

 

Her advice to new writers is to think about the small stories that create the larger whole.  

 

“Bigger stories are made out of longer acquaintance with fact and character,” she said, “but I also love the tiny stories in which almost everything has to be inferred and imagined.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Doing Extraordinary Stuff'

A Writer's Moment: 'Doing Extraordinary Stuff':   “It's kind of a misnomer about science fiction that science fiction is about anything other than people. It's about people doing s...

'Doing Extraordinary Stuff'

 

“It's kind of a misnomer about science fiction that science fiction is about anything other than people. It's about people doing stuff, sometimes doing extraordinary stuff.” – Greg Bear

 

Born in San Diego on this date in 1951, Sci-Fi writer and illustrator Bear published more than 30 novels and 5 story collections, earning nearly all the top writing awards including 5 Nebulas, 2 Hugos, 2 Endeavours and the Galaxy Award from China.  He was one of the original founders of San Diego’s Comic-Con. 

 

Among the best known of his books are the Forge of God and The Way series, and his works on “accelerated evolution” – Blood Music, Darwin's Radio and Darwin's Children.   Bear’s last title, published just before his death in 2022, is The Unfinished Land.

 

Blood Music, first published as a short story, is the first in science fiction to describe microscopic medical machines and treat DNA as a computational system capable of being reprogrammed.  Often classified as a “hard” science fiction author due to the level of scientific detail in his work, his tales often addressed major questions in contemporary science and culture and then proposed solutions.   

 

 “Science fiction works best,” he said, “when it stimulates debate.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Like keeping in touch with friends'

A Writer's Moment: 'Like keeping in touch with friends':   “The characters I'm most emotionally involved with are like friends you leave behind when you move away. You don't see them regula...

'Like keeping in touch with friends'

 

“The characters I'm most emotionally involved with are like friends you leave behind when you move away. You don't see them regularly anymore, but you still love them and keep in touch.” – Mary Doria Russell

 

Born in Illinois on this date in 1950, Russell, who now resides in Cleveland, OH, has authored 7 novels, earning acclaim for all.   

 

Planning to be an anthropologist, she already had earned a doctorate in biological anthropology and was teaching anatomy as a “post-doc” at Case Western dental school when she tried her hand at writing, authoring a Sci-Fi tale called The Sparrow.  A massive bestseller and winner of numerous prizes – including the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award – it led to her earning “Best First Novelist” accolades and put her on a new career path.

 

Among her other top titles are a sequel to The Sparrow called Children of God, the historical murder mystery  Doc, about notorious gunfighter, gambler and dentist John Henry “Doc” Holiday, and her most recent title The Women of the Copper Country.  Set in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the meticulously researched novel tells the story of the young union organizer Annie Clements, once known as America’s Joan of Arc. 

 

“Wisdom begins when you discover the difference between ‘That doesn’t make sense’ and ‘I don’t understand,' " she said.  "I don’t have much in the way of advice, but here it is:  Read to children.  Vote.  And never buy anything from a man who’s selling fear.”

A Writer's Moment: 'A place where you live'

A Writer's Moment: 'A place where you live':   “I think of novels as houses. You live in them over the course of a long period, both as a reader and as a writer.”  – Nicole Krauss   ...

A Writer's Moment: 'Avoiding labels, sharing life's moments'

A Writer's Moment: 'Avoiding labels, sharing life's moments':     Writers never feel comfortable having labels attached to them, however accurate they are.  – Jonathan Coe   Born in England on this ...

'Avoiding labels, sharing life's moments'

  Writers never feel comfortable having labels attached to them, however accurate they are. – Jonathan Coe

 

Born in England on this date in 1961, Coe has spent most of his career writing satirical novels about politics.  That being said, his current work is 2024’s shadowy and hilarious “whodunit” The Proof of My Innocence.     He’s also a terrific biographer and his nonfiction book Humphrey Bogart: Take It And Like It is one of the best written about the late actor.  

 

Besides writing 15 books, Coe has had an ongoing career in music, playing keyboards in the band The Peer Group and writing a number of songs for that band and others.   And he’s collaborated on a wide range of songs and continues to toy with “just focusing on music, which is why I can’t decide what I really want to be,” although writing continues to lead the way.

 

“I have trouble keeping things out of books, which is why I don't write short stories.  They just seem to turn into novels.” 

'A place where you live'

 

“I think of novels as houses. You live in them over the course of a long period, both as a reader and as a writer.” – Nicole Krauss

 

Born in New York City on this date in 1974, Krauss is perhaps best known for her novels Man Walks Into a Room and The History of Love, although her short fiction has also been widely published in everything from The New Yorker to Best American Short Stories.   Her most recent book is the short story collection How To Be A Man.

 

A writer since childhood, she said “My first opus was a book of poems put down in a spiral notebook at five or six, handsomely accompanied by crayon illustrations.”

Krauss “officially” started writing in her teens and won several undergraduate prizes for her poetry and the Dean's Award for academic achievement while studying at Stanford.  She had her first novel published in 2001 and now has 4 novels (2 adapted into film) that have been translated into 35 languages.

 

“What interests me in writing a novel,” she said, “is taking really remote voices, characters, and stories and beginning to create some kind of web.”

A Writer's Moment: Droll verse, lasting impact

A Writer's Moment: Droll verse, lasting impact:   “If you don't want to work you have to work to earn enough money so that you won't have to work”  – Ogden Nash   Born on Aug. ...

Droll verse, lasting impact

 

“If you don't want to work you have to work to earn enough money so that you won't have to work” – Ogden Nash

 

Born on Aug. 20, 1902 Nash was known for his light comic verse, and at the time of his death in 1971 The New York Times said his "droll verse with its unconventional rhymes made him the country's best-known producer of humorous poetry.”    Nash wrote over 500 poems – the best published in 14 volumes between 1931 and 1972.   For Saturday’s Poem, here is Nash’s,

 

              Goody for Our Side and Your Side Too

Foreigners are people somewhere else,
Natives are people at home;
If the place you’re at
Is your habitat,
You’re a foreigner, say in Rome.
But the scales of Justice balance true,
And tit leads into tat,
So the man who’s at home
When he stays in Rome
Is abroad when he’s where you’re at.

 

When we leave the limits of the land in which
Our birth certificates sat us,
It does not mean
Just a change of scene,
But also a change of status.
The Frenchman with his fetching beard,
The Scot with his kilt and sporran,
One moment he
May a native be,
And the next may find him foreign.

 

There’s many a difference quickly found
Between the different races,
But the only essential
Differential
Is living different places.
Yet such is the pride of prideful man,
From Austrians to Australians,
That wherever he is,
He regards as his,
And the natives there, as aliens.

 

Oh, I’ll be friends if you’ll be friends,
The foreigner tells the native,
And we’ll work together for our common ends
Like a preposition and a dative.
If our common ends seem mostly mine,
Why not, you ignorant foreigner?
And the native replies
Contrariwise;
And hence, my dears, the coroner.

 

So mind your manners when a native, please,
And doubly when you visit
And between us all
A rapport may fall
Ecstatically exquisite.
One simple thought, if you have it pat,
Will eliminate the coroner:
You may be a native in your habitat,
But to foreigners you’re just a foreigner.

 

A Writer's Moment: 'Bearing witness to life'

A Writer's Moment: 'Bearing witness to life':     “Literature speaks with everyone individually - it is personal property that stays inside our heads. And nothing speaks to us as forcefu...

'Bearing witness to life'

 

 “Literature speaks with everyone individually - it is personal property that stays inside our heads. And nothing speaks to us as forcefully as a book, which expects nothing in return other than that we think and feel.” – Herta Müller

 

Born in Romania on Aug. 17, 1953 Müller is a novelist, poet, essayist and recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature.   Her works have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Many of Müller's writings address an individual's vulnerability under oppression and persecution, rooted in her own experiences as one of Romania's German-speaking ethnic minority under the brutal dictator Ceaușescu.   Perhaps best-known among her many novels are The Passport and The Hunger Angel, along with several best-selling books of poetry and an award-winning book of essays, Hunger and Silk.

“I write in order to bear witness to life,” she said.  “What can't be said can be written. Because writing is a silent act, a labor from the head to the hand.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Life itself is a writer's lover'

A Writer's Moment: 'Life itself is a writer's lover':   “Life can't defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death.”  – Edna Ferber Born in ...

'Life itself is a writer's lover'

 “Life can't defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death.” – Edna Ferber

Born in Kalamazoo, MI on Aug. 15, 1885 Ferber was a novelist, short story writer and playwright, who won a four Pulitzer Prizes – for So Big, Show Boat, Cimarron and Giant, the latter three also made into award-winning movies. And Show Boat was adapted for the stage as a Broadway musical while Cimarron won the Academy Award for Best Picture. 

 

Ferber's novels generally featured strong female protagonists, along with a rich and diverse collection of supporting characters. She usually highlighted at least one strong secondary character who faced discrimination ethnically or for other reasons, demonstrating her belief that people are people and that the not-so-pretty people have the best character.

“I like to look at all sides of people and be open to any idea,” she said.  “A closed mind is a dying mind.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Brooding over a chaos of possibilities'

A Writer's Moment: 'Brooding over a chaos of possibilities':   “I never know how to give advice to a writer because there's so much you could say, and it's hard to translate your own experience...

'Brooding over a chaos of possibilities'

 

“I never know how to give advice to a writer because there's so much you could say, and it's hard to translate your own experience. But of course, I always try. The main thing that I usually end up saying is to read a lot. To read a great deal and to learn from that.” – Sue Monk Kidd

 

Monk Kidd is perhaps best known for her novel The Secret Life of Bees, the story of a white girl who runs away from home to live with her deceased mother's former black nanny, who now works as an independent beekeeper and honey maker.  A wonderful study of relationships and understanding, the book also has been made into a long-running Broadway play and award-winning movie.

 

Born in Sylvester, GA on Aug. 12, 1948 Monk Kidd’s first published work was a personal essay written for a class, published in Guideposts and then reprinted in Readers’ Digest.  She went on to become a Contributing Editor at Guideposts and a regular writer for numerous magazines and journals.

 

A strong advocate for keeping daily journals, she keeps notes about her life and her writing process, “particularly when I get the ideas, and I am trying to brood over the chaos phase.  In writing a novel, you really have to brood over a lot of chaos of ideas and possibilities.”

 

Monk Kidd said she is always glad to hear that readers feel immersed in her stories.  “I want my words to open a portal through which the reader may leave the self, migrate to some other human sky and return 'disposed' to otherness,” she said.

A Writer's Moment: 'Pursued with a passion'

A Writer's Moment: 'Pursued with a passion':   “I love writing. I've pursued it with a passion.”  – Betsy Byars    Born in Charlotte, NC, on Aug. 7, 1928 Byars started writing whi...

'Pursued with a passion'

 

“I love writing. I've pursued it with a passion.” – Betsy Byars

 

 Born in Charlotte, NC, on Aug. 7, 1928 Byars started writing while still in high school, pursuing it further at Furman University and then at Queens College in New York where she earned a degree in English.  After a 10-year career in magazine writing, she authored her first book Clementine in 1962 and never turned back.

 

Listed among the 10 best writers for children during her lifetime, she wrote more than 50 books (the last published in 2006) and collaborated with her two daughters on half-a-dozen more.  She also wrote a bestselling memoir.

 

Her 1970 novel Summer of the Swans won the Newbery Medal, and her 1980 novel The Night Swimmers earned a National Book Award.  And, to show she also could handle mystery writing, her 1991 novel Wanted …Mud Blossom won the coveted Edgar Prize.  While she created some of the most popular and beloved characters in children’s literature, she presented each of them only once in her many books.

 

“Early in my career,” Byars said, “I decided not to do sequels. I know that children enjoy them, but I valued the feeling that this was the only time I would write about these characters. I felt it gave me an added incentive to do my best by them, to tell readers everything I knew, to hold nothing back.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Wealth enough fo me'

A Writer's Moment: 'Wealth enough for me':   “I have no riches but my thoughts. Yet these are wealth enough for me.”  – Sara Teasdale   Winner of the first Pulitzer Prize awarded ...

'Wealth enough for me'

 

“I have no riches but my thoughts. Yet these are wealth enough for me.” – Sara Teasdale

 

Winner of the first Pulitzer Prize awarded for poetry, Teasdale was born in St. Louis on Aug. 8, 1884. She started writing poetry in her teens as a member of The Potters, a group of writers and artists formed to advance the works of women and published her first book, Sonnets to Duse and Other Poems, in 1907.  Her fourth collection, Love Poems, won the Pulitzer.  

 

For Saturday’s Poem, here are two of Teasdale’s popular short poems from that collection.

 

                        I Thought Of You

I thought of you and how you love this beauty,
And walking up the long beach all alone
I heard the waves breaking in measured thunder
As you and I once heard their monotone.

Around me were the echoing dunes, beyond me
The cold and sparkling silver of the sea --
We two will pass through death and ages lengthen
Before you hear that sound again with me.

 

Water Lilies 

If you have forgotten water lilies floating
On a dark lake among mountains in the afternoon shade,
If you have forgotten their wet, sleepy fragrance,
Then you can return and not be afraid.

But if you remember, then turn away forever
To the plains and the prairies where pools are far apart,
There you will not come at dusk on closing water lilies,
And the shadow of mountains will not fall on your heart.

A Writer's Moment: The exciting variety of each new creation

A Writer's Moment: The exciting variety of each new creation:   “Each of my books is different from the last, each with its own characters, its own setting, its own themes. As a writer, I need the varie...

The exciting variety of each new creation

 

“Each of my books is different from the last, each with its own characters, its own setting, its own themes. As a writer, I need the variety. I sense my readers do, too.” – Barbara Delinsky

 

Born in Boston on this date in 1945 Delinsky has authored 80-plus novels under her own name and the pen names Bonnie Drake and Billie Douglass.  Her books have sold over 30 million copies worldwide and 20 have made the New York Times bestseller list. 

 

Delinsky earned degrees from Tufts University and Boston College and got into writing “by fluke. My twins were four when, by chance, I happened on a newspaper article profiling three female writers. Intrigued, I spent three months researching, plotting, and writing my own book – and it sold.”  

 

She writes primarily about emotional crises, especially everyday people facing not so everyday challenges.  Her most recent books are A Single Rose in 2023 and Tender Loving Care in 2024.

 

 A breast cancer survivor, she also has written two nonfiction books, including the mega-bestseller Uplift: Secrets of the Sisterhood of Breast Cancer Survivors, with proceeds going toward cancer research. 

 

 “I believe in growth,” she said, “in myself and in the characters I create.”

A Writer's Moment: At the heart of 'amazing and cool'

A Writer's Moment: At the heart of 'amazing and cool':   “Teens want to read something that isn't a lie; we adults wish we could put our heads under the blankets and hide from the scary story...

At the heart of 'amazing and cool'

 

“Teens want to read something that isn't a lie; we adults wish we could put our heads under the blankets and hide from the scary story we're writing for our kids.” – Paolo Bacigalupi

 

Born in the small Western Colorado town of Paonia (population less than 1,500) on this date in 1972, Bacigalupi grew up on a farm, studied writing and Chinese, traveled the globe, and started his career writing stories – both journalistic and creative – about Far Eastern cultures and countries.   Today, he is best known for his science fiction and fantasy writing for Young Adults. 

 

Winner of most of the major Sci-Fi prizes, including Hugo, Nebula and Michael L. Printz Awards, he also has been nominated for a National Book Award and is a regular contributor to magazines, journals and newspapers.   

 

Fact-based, journalistic style permeates his work, especially in his award-winning collection Pump Six and Other Stories, and in his much-celebrated novel The Windup Girl, set in 23^rd Century Thailand.  A great “What If?” tale, the book made almost every “Best Novel” and “Best Sci-Fi” list.    His most recent book is 2024’s Navola,, called “historical fantasy with echoes of Renaissance Italy, The Godfather and Game of Thrones” by reviewers.

 

Bacigalupi said he’s glad young people are drawn to his works. “As a writer, you should care about reluctant readers,” he said.  “You want kids to feel like books are amazing and cool and that they're an escape.”

A Writer's Moment: 'It's not a popularity contest'

A Writer's Moment: 'It's not a popularity contest':   “We don't go into journalism to be popular. It is our job to seek the truth and put constant pressure on our leaders until we get answ...

'It's not a popularity contest'

 

“We don't go into journalism to be popular. It is our job to seek the truth and put constant pressure on our leaders until we get answers.” – Helen Thomas
 
Born in Winchester, KY on this date in 1920, Thomas plowed new ground for women in journalism and gave true meaning to the term “Watchdog for Democracy.”  
 
The author of 6 bestselling books, led by Front Row at the White House, she was a news reporter for 60 years, writing thousands of articles and doing a syndicated column for the United Press International.  She literally began her career in the trenches (as a copygirl at the Washington Daily News) and ended it as the UPI's Chief White House correspondent, earning every major newswriting award and 30 honorary doctorate degrees along the way.
 
Thomas, who died in 2013, was the first female officer of the National Press Club, and the first female member and president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, covering the administrations of 11 U.S. presidents from Eisenhower to Obama, and often drawing their ire for her tough questions. 
 
“Presidents deserve to be questioned,” she said. “Maybe irreverently, most of the time.  I don’t think a tough question is being disrespectful.”

A Writer's Moment: 'To cherish the earth'

A Writer's Moment: 'To cherish the earth':   “The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it ...

'To cherish the earth'

 

“The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.” – Wendell Berry

 

Born in Kentucky on Aug. 5, 1934 the prolific Berry has authored multiple novels, short stories, poems, and essays.  Poetry, he said, “exists at the center of a complex reminding.”   For Saturday’s Poem, here is Berry’s,

 

                                                      Water

I was born in a drought year. That summer
my mother waited in the house, enclosed
in the sun and the dry ceaseless wind,
for the men to come back in the evenings,
bringing water from a distant spring.

Veins of leaves ran dry, roots shrank.
And all my life I have dreaded the return
of that year, sure that it still is
somewhere, like a dead enemy’s soul.
Fear of dust in my mouth is always with me,
and I am the faithful husband of the rain,
I love the water of wells and springs
and the taste of roofs in the water of cisterns.

I am a dry man whose thirst is praise
of clouds, and whose mind is something of a cup.
My sweetness is to wake in the night
after days of dry heat, hearing the rain.

A Writer's Moment: 'Constructing consciousness out of words'

A Writer's Moment: 'Constructing consciousness out of words':   "Novelists are in the business of constructing consciousness out of words, and that's what we all do, cradle to grave.  The Self ...

'Constructing consciousness out of words'

 

"Novelists are in the business of constructing consciousness out of words, and that's what we all do, cradle to grave.  The Self is a story we tell.” – James Gleick

Born in New York City on this date in 1954, Gleick is an author, science historian, and internet pioneer whose work has chronicled the cultural impact of modern technology on our lives.  I first interacted with his work as a member of the Science Writers of America – a somewhat dubious designation for me, although I do like writing science features from time-to-time and was honored to be accepted into their clan.

Winner of many awards for his writing and critical reviews, he has been a three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and finalist for the National Book Award for The Information:  A History, a Theory, a Flood.  And, he holds the distinction of being the first editor of "The Best American Science Writing Series."  

 

In a feature about him, the Wall Street Journal said some writers excel at crafting a historical narrative, others at elucidating esoteric theories, and others at humanizing scientists.  Gleick, they said, is a master of all three.  Gleick’s books have been translated into more than 30 languages, his most recent being Time Travel: A History.

 

“Neither technology nor efficiency can acquire more time for you,” Gleick wrote, “because time is not a thing you have lost.  It is not a thing you ever had.”

***
On a side note, today's is my 4,000th post since starting this blog on Aug. 1, 2014.  It's been a definite "kick start" to my writing day.  Thanks to the loyal readers who have followed since its beginning, and welcome to those who have recently found these posts and chosen to come back for more.   Cheers!