A Writer's Moment: Seeing characters and stories 'everywhere'

A Writer's Moment: Seeing characters and stories 'everywhere': "With historicals, the research is half the fun.  Contemporaries are especially easy.  People are right out there in front of you; yo...

Seeing characters and stories 'everywhere'

"With historicals, the research is half the fun.  Contemporaries are especially easy.  People are right out there in front of you; you meet them every day.  You can concentrate wholly on the story and characters." – Heather Graham Pozzessere 

 Born in Miami, Fla., on March 15, 1953 Pozzessere has penned more than 150 novels and novellas, writing in the historical, romance, paranormal and suspense genres.  Also known under both her maiden name Heather Graham, and pen name Shannon Drake, she has built a faithful reading audience that ranges in age from teenagers to women in their 90s – “and men, too,” she said, “especially for my Civil War era books.”  Her most recent, co-authored with Jon Land, is Blood Moon.

 

Once an aspiring actress, Pozzessere has starred instead as a writer – awarded the Romance Writers of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award and the Thriller Writer's Silver Bullet for her charitable efforts.  She is founder of the Florida Chapter of the Romance Writers of America, and a member of Mystery Writers of America, Novelists Inc., and the Horror Writers Association.

 

A graduate of the University of South Florida and mother of 5, Pozzessere started writing in the early 1980s.  Her first book, When Next We Love, came out in 1983, and she followed it with a remarkable 12 more titles from 1983 to 1985.  She said she sees characters and stories “everywhere.” 

 

“I always feel a responsibility to the people I write about,” she said.  “I feel obligated to portray them in the way they feel is proper.”

A Writer's Moment: Inspiration from just one moon

A Writer's Moment: Inspiration from just one moon:   “The moon looks upon many night flowers; the night flowers see but one moon.” –  Jean Ingelow   Born in England in March of 1820, Inge...

Inspiration from just one moon

 

“The moon looks upon many night flowers; the night flowers see but one moon.” – Jean Ingelow

 

Born in England in March of 1820, Ingelow was a poet and novelist whose writing career began while she was still a teenager. Despite that, she didn’t achieve fame until publication of Poems in 1863, a book that ran through numerous editions with many of its poems set to popular music.  She followed that success with her best-selling children’s book Mopsa The Fairy, today included in A Critical History of Children’s Literature.  For Saturday’s Poem, here is Ingelow’s,

 

                             The Warbling of Blackbirds

                        When I hear the waters fretting,
                        When I see the chestnut letting
                        All her lovely blossom falter down, I think, “Alas the day!”
                        Once with magical sweet singing,
                        Blackbirds set the woodland ringing,
                        That awakes no more while April hours wear themselves away.

                        In our hearts fair hope lay smiling,
                        Sweet as air, and all beguiling;
                       And there hung a mist of bluebells on the slope and down the dell;
                       And we talked of joy and splendor
                       That the years unborn would render,
                       And the blackbirds helped us with the story, for they knew it well.

                       Piping, fluting, “Bees are humming,
                      April’s here, and summer’s coming;
                      Don’t forget us when you walk, a man with men, in pride and joy;
                      Think on us in alleys shady,
                      When you step a graceful lady;
                      For no fairer day have we to hope for, little girl and boy.

                     “Laugh and play, O lisping waters,
                      Lull our downy sons and daughters;
                      Come, O wind, and rock their leafy cradle in thy wanderings coy;
                      When they wake we’ll end the measure
                      With a wild sweet cry of pleasure,
                      And a ‘Hey down derry, let’s be merry! little girl and boy!’”

A Writer's Moment: Just 'get those voices on paper'

A Writer's Moment: Just 'get those voices on paper':   “I think every fiction writer, to a certain extent, is a schizophrenic and able to have two or three or five voices in his or her body. We...

Just 'get those voices on paper'

 

“I think every fiction writer, to a certain extent, is a schizophrenic and able to have two or three or five voices in his or her body. We seek, through our profession, to get those voices onto paper.” – Ridley Pearson

 

Born in Glen Cove, NY on this date in 1953, Pearson has authored 30 suspense and thriller novels for adults and 20 adventure books for kids, the most recent being The Final Step in 2018.   His “Walt Fleming” and “Lou Boldt” series of mystery thrillers have earned him legions of adult readers, and his “Peter & The Starcatchers” and “Kingdom Keepers” series have an equal, if not greater, following among the younger crowd.  

 

Pearson studied at Brown University and the University of Kansas, and after becoming the first American to receive the Raymond Chandler-Fulbright Fellowship at Oxford University, he has spent most of his writing career in St. Louis, MO, where he also has been a tireless advocate for young people developing their own writing skills.   The Missouri Writers Hall of Fame presented him with its highest honor, The Quill Award, for his efforts.  

 

“My favorite novel is To Kill a Mockingbird because of its broad sweep, its tackling of big issues in ways that even young minds can make sense of, and for the heart of the characters, who span a wide range of ages,” he said.  “I re-read it every year.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Actually living in a book'

A Writer's Moment: 'Actually living in a book':   “Write like it matters, and it will.” –  Libba Bray   Born Martha Elizabeth Bray in Alabama on this date in 1964, “Libba” grew up in ...

'Actually living in a book'

 

“Write like it matters, and it will.” – Libba Bray

 

Born Martha Elizabeth Bray in Alabama on this date in 1964, “Libba” grew up in Texas and now makes her home in New York City where she went to work as a book publicist and advertising specialist after studying at the University of Texas.  After working on behalf of other people’s books for several years she dived into the writing pool herself and became a best-selling author right from the start.

 

Her first novel, 2003’s A Great and Terrible Beauty – the first in the “Gemma Doyle Trilogy” – not only was a New York Times bestseller but a Book Standard's Teen Book Video Awards winner.   Bray also won the prestigious Michael L. Printz Award, recognizing literary excellence in Young Adult literature, for her book Going Bovine.  She has now authored 10 novels – including 2025’s Under the Stars – and numerous short stories.

 

“I was a big reader as a kid,” she said.  “It was Charlotte's Web that showed me you could feel as if you were actually living inside a book.”

A Writer's Moment: Rallying emotions for writing success

A Writer's Moment: Rallying emotions for writing success:   “If you can't laugh at your own characters, or shed a tear for them, or even get angry at one of them, no one else will either.” – Joh...

Rallying emotions for writing success

 

“If you can't laugh at your own characters, or shed a tear for them, or even get angry at one of them, no one else will either.” – Johanna Lindsey

 

Born in Frankfurt, West Germany on this date in 1952, Lindsey literally owned the title “Queen of American historical romance writers” for nearly 40 years.  All of her 56 books reached the New York Times bestseller list and many were number one, including her 2016 award winner, Make Me Love You, and her humorous and passionate Temptation’s Darling, published in 2019 shortly before her death from cancer.  Translated into numerous languages, her books have sold over 60 million copies.

 

Raised in a military family, Lindsey said she had the usual “Army Brat” experiences, including numerous moves before settling in Hawaii in 1964, where she married, raised a family and lived until 1994 before relocating to New England, where she was living at the time of her death.

 

Lindsey began writing in 1977, doing her first book Captive Bride “on a whim.”  She set her passionate tales in many locales, including the Caribbean, the Barbary Coast, Medieval England, Viking-era Norway, the19th-century American West, and even a sci-fi locale – the planet Kystran.   She often produced two books a year. 

 

 “Biding time is easy,” she explained, “and gets you nowhere.”

A Writer's Moment: Tackling challenges 'all for the good'

A Writer's Moment: Tackling challenges 'all for the good':   “The natural world is the only one we have. To try to not see the natural world - to put on blinders and avoid seeing it - would for me se...

Tackling challenges 'all for the good'

 

“The natural world is the only one we have. To try to not see the natural world - to put on blinders and avoid seeing it - would for me seem like a form of madness. I'm also interested in the way landscape shapes individuals and populations, and from that, cultures.” - Rick Bass

 

Born in Fort Worth, TX on March 7, 1958, Bass is the son of a geologist and was a petroleum geologist himself until he started writing short stories on his lunch breaks.  That led to him to an award-winning career as both a writer and environmental activist.  Now a resident of the remote Yaak Valley in Montana, his books, stories and essays are distributed worldwide, and he also is a nationally known speaker on environmental issues.   

 

Among Bass’s more than two dozen books are the award-winning Where the Sea Used to Be; his short story collection The Lives of Rocks; and the autobiographical Why I Came West.  Among his many other prizes are the General Electric Younger Writers Award, a PEN/Nelson Algren Special Citation for Fiction, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. He writes both fiction and nonfiction, and his latest book is the nonfiction Wrecking Ball: Race, Friendship, God, and Football, published in 2025.

When asked about writing fiction versus nonfiction, he said, “I think a novelist must be more tender with living or 'real' people. . . A novel that features real people is complicated, but in the end, that extra challenge is all for the good.”

A Writer's Moment: Those 'moments in time'

A Writer's Moment: Those 'moments in time':   “It's hard to write haiku. I mostly write long, silly Indian poems .” – Jack Kerouac   That having been said, Kerouac – born in Ma...

Those 'moments in time'

 

“It's hard to write haiku. I mostly write long, silly Indian poems.” – Jack Kerouac

 

That having been said, Kerouac – born in March of 1922 and best remembered for his autobiographical novel On The Road – wrote a lot of haiku, scattered in among his many other writings.  On the Road, of course, is considered THE defining work of the post-WWII Beat and Counterculture generations, with its protagonists living life against a backdrop of jazz, poetry, and drug use.  It was based on the travels of Kerouac and his friends across America.   But, for Saturday’s Poems, here are 3 of Kerouac’s “most-liked” (his words) haikus. I like them too.  .

 

                                           Holding Up My

Holding up my
purring cat to the moon
I sighed.

Birds Singing

Birds singing
in the dark
—Rainy dawn.

 

                                           The Low Yellow

The low yellow
moon above the
Quiet lamplit house.

A Writer's Moment: 'Always connected'

A Writer's Moment: 'Always connected':   “In fantasy, you can make a complete break, and you can put people in a situation where they are confronted with things that they would no...

'Always connected'

 

“In fantasy, you can make a complete break, and you can put people in a situation where they are confronted with things that they would not confront in the real world.” – Elizabeth Moon

 

Born in McAllen, TX on March 7, 1945, Moon started writing Science Fiction and Fantasy as a teenager – something she first looked upon as a sideline before realizing she had a knack for creating new worlds that people wanted to read about.   After a career as a U.S. Marine Corps officer, she turned back to writing, first as a successful newspaper columnist and opinion writer then as a writer of science fiction. 

 

Her first novel, leading to “The Deed of Paksenarrion” series, was 1988’s Sheepfarmer’s Daughter, winner of the Compton Crook Award for best debut sci-fi novel.  She's now written 35 books, the most recent a collection of 6 stories titled Deeds of Wisom: Paksenarrion World Chronicles III, published in 2025.

  

Among Moon's many other awards are the Robert A. Heinlein Award for "outstanding published works in hard science fiction or technical writings that inspire the human exploration of space,” and a “Best Novel” Hugo for The Speed of Dark, a near-future story told from the viewpoint of an autistic computer programmer and inspired by her son Michael.

 

“My personal feeling about science fiction,” she said, “is that it's always in some way connected  . . . to our everyday world.“

A Writer's Moment: 'History is what we bring to it'

A Writer's Moment: 'History is what we bring to it':   “History is what we bring to it, not just the events themselves, but how we interpret those events.” – Robert Harris Born in March of 1...

'History is what we bring to it'

 

“History is what we bring to it, not just the events themselves, but how we interpret those events.” – Robert Harris

Born in March of 1957 in Nottingham, England (made famous by The Legend of Robin Hood), Harris’s writing career began as a print journalist and morphed into television reporting (for the BBC) before he switched to historical writing in the late 1980s.  

 

Harris’s first big hit was the bestseller Fatherland and he built a loyal following with books focused on World War II, including the wildly successful Enigma – both a bestseller and an award-winning movie.   Since then he has had successful forays into ancient Rome and contemporary history, including another massive award-winning bestseller and movie Conclave.

 

Now the author of 5 nonfiction books and 17 novels his next one, set in ancient Rome, is due out in August.  Called Agrippa, it is based on the Roman general and statesman Marcus Agrippa as he looks back on his lifelong friendship with Octavian – the Roman emperor Augustus Caesar.

   

“I write as well as I can,” Harris said.  “I'm a journalist at heart, so (to me) it's the story that matters.”   

A Writer's Moment: 'The capacity for writing success'

A Writer's Moment: 'The capacity for writing success':   “I think we have a great deal of mythology around writing. We believe that only a few people can really do it. I wrote a book called   The...

'The capacity for writing success'

 

“I think we have a great deal of mythology around writing. We believe that only a few people can really do it. I wrote a book called  The Right to Write.  In it, I argued that all of us have the capacity to write. That it's as normal to write s it is to speak.” – Julia Cameron

 

Born on this date in 1948, Cameron has been a teacher, author, artist, poet, playwright, novelist, filmmaker, composer, and journalist.  She’s earned acclaim in almost every category but perhaps is most famous for her teaching and books on writing and creativity, including The Artist's Way.  She has written 3 dozen nonfiction books, 2 novels, 6 plays, 4 books of poetry, and many, many short stories, essays and screenplays.  Her most recent book, published in 2024, is The Artist's Way Toolkit, How to Use the Creative Practices.

 

She grew up in Chicago, went to college in New York and Washington, DC, and started her career as a writer at the Washington Post before moving over to Rolling Stone magazine. While working on an article for Oui Magazine, she met and married director Martin Scorsese – a marriage that lasted just a year and produced a daughter.  Despite their divorce, they have worked together on several successful films.     

 

“I have learned, as a rule of thumb, never to ask whether you can do something,” she said.  “Say, instead, that you are doing it. Then fasten your seat belt. The most remarkable things follow.“

A Writer's Moment: 'Don't get jealous; get inspired'

A Writer's Moment: 'Don't get jealous; get inspired':   “My inspiration for writing is all the wonderful books that I read as a child and that I still read. I think that for those of us who writ...

'Don't get jealous; get inspired'

 

“My inspiration for writing is all the wonderful books that I read as a child and that I still read. I think that for those of us who write, when we find a wonderful book written by someone else, we don't really get jealous, we get inspired, and that's kind of the mark of what a good writer is.” –  Patricia MacLachlan

 

Born in Cheyenne, Wyo. on this date in 1938, MacLachlan is best known for her 1986 Newbery Medal-winning novel (and series of books) Sarah, Plain and Tall, also adapted into television movies by Hallmark.

 

MacLachlan “grew up on the prairie” and said the experience shaped both who she was and how she learned to portray things.   While she studied, married and lived in New England most of her adult life, she kept a small bag of dirt from the Wyoming prairies to call to mind her Wyoming roots.

 

MacLachlan wrote many award-winning and sought-after books – 35 in all – and her final two, My Life Begins and Snow Horses: A First Night Story both came out  in 2022, the year of her death.  For a great example of her poetic, poignant style, check out her 2015 novel, The Truth of Me, a celebration of how our unique "small truths" make each of us magical and brave in our own ways.

 

“I have great editors and I always have,” she modestly said of her successes.  “Somehow, great editors ask the right questions or pose things to you that get you to write better. It's a dance between you, your characters, and your editor.”

A Writer's Moment: 'You have to trust the narrative'

A Writer's Moment: 'You have to trust the narrative':   “When you start a novel, it is always like pushing a boulder uphill. Then, after a while, to mangle the metaphor, the boulder fills with h...

'You have to trust the narrative'

 

“When you start a novel, it is always like pushing a boulder uphill. Then, after a while, to mangle the metaphor, the boulder fills with helium and becomes a balloon that carries you the rest of the way to the top. You just have to hold your nerve and trust the narrative.” – Jim Crace

 

Born in Hertfordshire, England on March 1, 1946 Crace is a “writer” and “novelist,” the distinction made because he looks upon “writing” as what he did as a journalist before turning to the creative side.  

 

Crace started his career as a teacher for British Volunteer Services Overseas, then wrote educational programs for the BBC before his time as a journalist.   He wrote for many of Britain’s leading newspapers before becoming discouraged by what he termed “political interference” and turned to the creative side in 1986, achieving immediate success.  Crace's first book Continent won the Whitbread First Novel of the Year Award, the David Higham Prize for Fiction, and the Guardian Fiction prize. New York Times critic Robert Olen Butler called it "brilliant, provocative and delightful.”  

He has since authored 14 more novels including Quarantine, also a Whitbread winner, and Harvest, winner of the International Dublin Literary Award and shortlisted for the Booker Prize.  His lates is eden. 

 

“When a book goes well, it abandons me," Crace said.  "I am the most abandoned writer in the world.”

A Writer's Moment: 'The most important thing in the world'

A Writer's Moment: 'The most important thing in the world':   “I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching mi...

A Writer's Moment: 'A single lovely action'

A Writer's Moment: 'A single lovely action':   “All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.” – James Russell Lowell   Born in Cambridge, Mass.,...

'A single lovely action'

 

“All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.” – James Russell Lowell

 

Born in Cambridge, Mass., in February of 1819, Lowell was associated with the Fireside Poets, among the first American poets to rival the popularity of British poets like Byron, Shelley and Keats.  The American writers used conventional forms and meters in their poetry, making them suitable for families entertaining at their fireside.   Lowell believed the poet played an important role as prophet and critic of society, using poetry for reform, particularly in abolitionism.    For Saturday’s Poem, here is Lowell’s,

                                                   Aladdin

When I was a beggarly boy
And lived in a cellar damp,
I had not a friend nor a toy,
But I had Aladdin's lamp;
When I could not sleep for the cold,
I had fire enough in my brain,
And builded, with roofs of gold,
My beautiful castles in Spain!

Since then I have toiled day and night,
I have money and power good store,
But I'd give all my lamps of silver bright
For the one that is mine no more;
Take, Fortune, whatever you choose,
You gave, and may snatch again;
I have nothing 'twould pain me to lose,
For I own no more castles in Spain!

'The most important thing in the world'

 

“I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.” – John Steinbeck

 

Born in Salinas, Calif., on this date in 1902, Steinbeck has been called “the embodiment of the American novelist” based on his many masterpieces like The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, and East of Eden.   The author of 27 books – 16 novels, 5 collections of creative short stories, and 6 books of non-fiction including the autobiographical Travels With Charley – Steinbeck's works are found around the globe, published in virtually every language with more 200 million copies in print.

 

In addition, a remarkable 17 were adapted to film, many giving generations an up-close insiders’ look at the people, places and ravages of The Great Depression.  Those stories, though, took their toll on him.  “In utter loneliness,” he wrote, “a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.”

 

Despite his many awards and accolades, including the Nobel Prize in Literature, he often questioned his own writing.   

 

“The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world,”  Steinbeck said.  “And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Always better for the experience'

A Writer's Moment: 'Always better for the experience':   “It is the job of the novelist to touch the reader.”  – Elizabeth George   Born in Warren, Ohio on this date in 1949, George has earne...

'Always better for the experience'

 

“It is the job of the novelist to touch the reader.” – Elizabeth George

 

Born in Warren, Ohio on this date in 1949, George has earned a basketful of awards, including Great Britain’s Anthony and Agatha Awards and France’s LeGrand Prix de Literature Policiere – a writing version of an Academy Award – for her mysteries.

 

A master of “journaling” to keep track of day-to-day happenings around her, George capitalized on the technique while writing about “ordinary and extraordinary” days in the life of an English detective 6,000 miles away from her home, her “Inspector Lynley” series (also an award-winning television series).

 

“I’ve always liked creating a journal.  It’s like the way I clear my throat,” she said.  “I write a page every day, maybe 500 words (that’s two pages double-spaced).  It could be about something I’m specifically worried about in a new novel; it could be a question I want answered; it could be something that’s going on in my personal life.  I just use it as an exercise.”

 

George, who said she knew by age 7 that she wanted to be a writer, earned degrees and worked in teaching (twice named Teacher of the Year for California’s largest county) and counseling/psychology before turning to writing about Detective Lynley.   To date the BBC has adapted 11 and created a new 4-part series about the detective.  All told, she’s written 27 novels, 2 nonfiction books and 3 collections of short stories.  Her latest being 2025’s A Slowly Dying Cause.

 

“I try to create a challenge for myself in each book,” she said.  “And sometimes, believe me, I just kick myself afterwards and say, ‘Why on earth did you ever attempt this, you idiot!’  But I’m always better for the experience.”

A Writer's Moment: Creating characters 'that entertain and inspire'

A Writer's Moment: Creating characters 'that entertain and inspire':   “All I wanted to do was read, to be told stories. Stories were full of excitement and emotions and characters that entertained and often i...

Creating characters 'that entertain and inspire'

 

“All I wanted to do was read, to be told stories. Stories were full of excitement and emotions and characters that entertained and often inspired.” – Cynthia Voigt

 

Born in Massachusetts on this date in 1942, Voigt wrote the best-selling and award-winning Young Adult books, Homecoming and Dicey’s Song – the latter winning the Newbery Medal for excellence in American children's literature and the former adapted into a movie.  Voigt also received the Margaret Edwards Award from the American Library Association recognizing her contribution in writing for teens.

 

 Drawn to writing at an early age, Voight said, “By the time I started high school, I knew I wanted to be a writer.”  After college, she worked in advertising, then teaching, first in New Mexico then Maryland before writing Homecoming.   The first in what became known as “The Tillerman Cycle” (a 7-book series about four children from a family named Tillerman), she soon was concentrating on writing full time.

 

Voigt said words don’t always “flow” from her imagination, but she has written 40 books, the latest being 2024’s When Wishes Were Horses.     

 

 “I have ideas that I have trouble starting to write,” she said.  “But I'm the kind of person who tends to finish everything she starts out of sheer stubbornness.”  

A Writer's Moment: 'The skeleton architecture of our lives'

A Writer's Moment: 'The skeleton architecture of our lives':   “Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a brid...

'The skeleton architecture of our lives'

 

“Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.” – Audre Lorde

 

Born in New York City in February oif 1934, Lorde was a writer and civil rights activist best known for poetry that dealt with issues related to civil rights, feminism, and the exploration of black female identity.   Among her most powerful and oft-quoted writings are the award-winning book of poetry, Coal, and her book on women’s rights, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches.   She also wrote and spoke eloquently about battling cancer, a disease from which she died at age 58.

 

For Saturday’s Poem here is Lorde’s,

 

                                                            Coping

It has rained for five days
running
the world is
a round puddle
of sunless water
where small islands
are only beginning
to cope
a young boy
in my garden
is bailing out water
from his flower patch
when I ask him why
he tells me
young seeds that have not seen sun
forget
and drown easily.

A Writer's Moment: 'It's what you can't stop thinking about'

A Writer's Moment: 'It's what you can't stop thinking about': “You have your identity when you find out, not what you can keep your mind on, but what you can't keep your mind off.” – A. R. Ammons   ...

'It's what you can't stop thinking about'

“You have your identity when you find out, not what you can keep your mind on, but what you can't keep your mind off.” – A. R. Ammons

 

Born in North Carolina on this date in 1926, Ammons worked as an elementary school principal and a glass company executive before turning his full attention to literature – both teaching and writing.   From 1964 to 1998 he taught creative writing at Cornell University while authoring hundreds, if not thousands, of poems.

 

Ammons wrote about nature and the self, themes that had preoccupied Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman and that remained the central focus of his work.  His Collected Poems, 1951–1971 (a terrific read) won a National Book Award.   And his Selected Poems is an excellent introduction to his works   In his work, Ammons focuses on change, both in nature and in daily life.           

                                                               

 Shortly before his death in 2001 Ammons was asked: “What is poetry?”    

                                                               

 “Poetry," he replied, "is the music of words . . . the linguistic correction of disorder.” 

A Writer's Moment: 'It's not a matter of choice'

A Writer's Moment: 'It's not a matter of choice': “Writing is not a matter of choice. Writers have to write. It is somehow in their temperament, in the blood, in tradition.”  – N. Scott Moma...

'It's not a matter of choice'

“Writing is not a matter of choice. Writers have to write. It is somehow in their temperament, in the blood, in tradition.” – N. Scott Momaday

 

Native American Momaday, a Kiowa was a novelist, short story writer, essayist and poet and winner of both the Pulitzer Prize (for his novel House Made of Dawn) and National Medal of Arts.  While “House” has been called “A Classic,” he is perhaps best known for the novel/memoir/folklore work The Way to Rainy Mountain.

 

Momaday grew up on Reservations in Arizona and New Mexico, and earned degrees from the University of New Mexico Stanford, where he also began his writing career, focusing first on poetry.  

 

Also a renowned teacher and speaker, he was one of the nation’s first Native American academics and created a curriculum based on American Indian literature and mythology.   In addition to his national honors, he was awarded some two dozen honorary degrees and was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  Selected for the Native American Hall of Fame in 2018, Momaday died in 2024.

 

 “I am interested in the way that we look at a given landscape and take possession of it in our blood and brain,” Momaday said.   “None of us lives apart from the land entirely; such an isolation is unimaginable.”

A Writer's Moment: 'That thing humans do'

A Writer's Moment: 'That thing humans do':   “Literature has as one of its principal allures that it tells you something about life that life itself can't tell you. I just thought...

'That thing humans do'

 

“Literature has as one of its principal allures that it tells you something about life that life itself can't tell you. I just thought literature is a thing that human beings do.” – Richard Ford

 

Born in Mississippi on this date in 1944, Ford is a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist and short story writer best known for his novels The Sportswriter, Independence Day, The Lay of the Land, and Let Me Be Frank With You.  He also wrote the best-selling short story collection Rock Springs, which has many widely anthologized stories.

 

The grandson of a railroad engineer, Ford started his adult life working for the railroad before deciding to further pursue his love of literature by studying English Literature at Michigan State University.  

 

“I started reading literature at 17 or 18, and I felt this extra beat to life,” he said.  “Reading is probably what leads most writers to writing.”  And so he became a writer, although he took a swing at law school first before dropping out to attend a creative writing program at the University of California.  His first books were well received but not big sellers, so he went to work as a sportswriter, which eventually led to his first bestseller, The Sportswriter.

 

Journalism and his personality have provided plenty for his writing base.  “My job is to have empathy and curiosity for things that I've never done,” he said.  “Also, I'm a person whom people talk to.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Dreams or Swords'

A Writer's Moment: 'Dreams or Swords':   All books are either dreams or swords; you can cut, or you can drug, with words.”  – Amy Lowell   Pulitzer Prize winner Lowell, whose ...

'Dreams or Swords'

 

All books are either dreams or swords; you can cut, or you can drug, with words.” – Amy Lowell

 

Pulitzer Prize winner Lowell, whose poetry falls into “The Imagest School,” was born in February of 1874, one of the many members of the Massachusetts’ Lowell family to make an impact on writing and education.  

 

Lowell was an early adherent of "free verse” and one of its major champions.   Although she didn’t start writing poetry until age 28 and died young (at age 51), Lowell produced more than a dozen major books of poetry, reprinted in The Complete Poetical Works of Amy Lowell, published in 1955.  For Saturday’s Poem, here is Lowell’s, 

                                                               Solitaire

When night drifts along the streets of the city,
And sifts down between the uneven roofs,
My mind begins to peek and peer.
It plays at ball in old, blue Chinese gardens,
And shakes wrought dice-cups in Pagan temples,
Amid the broken flutings of white pillars.
It dances with purple and yellow crocuses in its hair,
And its feet shine as they flutter over drenched grasses.
How light and laughing my mind is,
When all the good folk have put out their bed-room candles,
And the city is still!

A Writer's Moment: The creation of an 'unlucky' myth

A Writer's Moment: The creation of an 'unlucky' myth:   Leave it to a writer to create a myth that dogs us to this day.  It’s often believed the   publication of Bostonian Thomas W. Lawson’s pop...

The creation of an 'unlucky' myth

 

Leave it to a writer to create a myth that dogs us to this day.  It’s often believed the publication of Bostonian Thomas W. Lawson’s popular novel Friday the 13^th  in 1907 contributed immensely to the creation of the myth. 

 

Born in Charlestown, Mass., in February of 1857, Lawson was intensely superstitious and made certain – as a promotional move – to not only name his book Friday the Thirteenth but also release it on that day.  It's the story of an unscrupulous stockbroker (also a profession he had in addition to writing) who brings down Wall Street on Friday the 13th.

Lawson chose to publish on Dec. 13, 1907, which ironically was the same day the only 7-masted schooner ever built - the Thomas W. Lawson (in which Lawson had invested heavily) - was wrecked off the coast of Sicily.  The triumph of his book's launch was quickly tempered by news that his ship had gone down just hours after the book's appearance.  

 

The mystique surrounding that combination of events led to the book becoming immensely popular and spawning dozens, if not hundreds, of other stories that led to an ongoing phobia about the day.   Up until that day in 1907 there is little, if any, mention of Friday the 13^th being a day of which to beware.    By the way, Lawson is said to have firmly believed in Lucky Number 7.  He was the author of 7 books.

 

P.S.  This is one of those lucky years when Friday the 13^th’s comes in back-to-back months.  Friday, March 13th, is just around the corner.