A Writer's Moment: 'Fire, joy and no apologies'

A Writer's Moment: 'Fire, joy and no apologies':   “Forget market or publishers or whatever. Just write with fire and joy, and in my own experience, those are the stories of mine people hav...

'Fire, joy and no apologies'

 

“Forget market or publishers or whatever. Just write with fire and joy, and in my own experience, those are the stories of mine people have wanted to read.” – Patrick Ness

 

Born at Fort Belvoir, VA on Oct. 17, 1971 Ness is best known for his books for young adults, including the Chaos Walking trilogy and Monsters of Men and A Monster Calls, back-to-back winners of the prestigious Carnegie Medal from the Association of British Librarians. 

 

The author of 14 novels and many short stories, he grew up in several different U.S. states, moving around as a member of an Army family.  After earning a degree from the University of Southern California, he relocated to London and now holds dual U.S.-British citizenship.

 

A Monster Calls, while a massive bestseller for Ness, was first an idea from fellow author Siobhan Dowd.  Gravely ill, she had developed it and asked Ness to do the writing and artist Jim Kay to illustrate it.  The resulting book not only won the Carnegie for Ness but also the Kate Greenaway Medal for Kay’s art – the first time one novel has won both major awards. 

 

While Ness’s books are primarily for Young Adults, he’s built a large support group of adult readers, too, and said YA fiction is popular with adults because many adults “hunger for narrative just as badly as teenagers do.”   Ness’s most recent books are Chronicles of a Lizard Nobody: The Hat of Great Importance (2025) and the first in a new planned trilogy Piper at the Gates of Dusk (out this past spring).

 

 “A book cannot apologize for what people may think it should be,” Ness said.  “It has to be authoritative. That's what I want as a reader - I want to be confident that the book will do its job.”

A Writer's Moment: 'The greatest story we can tell'

A Writer's Moment: 'The greatest story we can tell':   “Baseball is a game that shouts, 'Slow Down' to America. Stop tweeting, texting, blogging, watching cable news, and obsessing abou...

'The greatest story we can tell'

 

“Baseball is a game that shouts, 'Slow Down' to America. Stop tweeting, texting, blogging, watching cable news, and obsessing about polls . . . and focus-group-driven politicians.” – Mike Barnicle

 

Born in Worcester, MA on Oct. 13, 1943, Barnicle has had a long award-winning career as a journalist for both print and electronic media.  He is the author of thousands of columns on American life, politics, religion and sports, especially baseball, back in the foreground now during the playoffs and World Series.   

 

Baseball, Barnicle said, has been a key part of American culture for well.   “(It) allows you to lose yourself in a dream, to feel and remember a season of life when summer never seemed to die and the assault of cynicism hadn't begun to batter optimism.”

 

In addition to his columns (he’s done more than 4,000), Barnicle writes for numerous magazines including Time, ESPN Magazine and Esquire, and is a regular on TV programs like The Today Show and Morning Joe.  And he’s been featured on documentaries like Fabulous Fenway: America's Legendary Ballpark and Ken Burns’ Baseball: The Tenth Inning. 

 

“I don't think we treat people very well in the media, both as customers - and I call them customers - of newspapers and magazines, or TV news,” Barnicle said.  “We don't understand that the greatest story that we could tell, each and every day, is the story of the people around us.”

A Writer's Moment: 'This is what you do'

A Writer's Moment: 'This is what you do': “ I write because I write - as anyone in the arts does,   You're a painter because you feel you have no choice but to paint. You're ...

'This is what you do'

“I write because I write - as anyone in the arts does,  You're a painter because you feel you have no choice but to paint. You're a writer because this is what you do.”  – Richard Price

 

Born in The Bronx, NY on Oct. 12, 1949 Price is perhaps best known for novels like Clockers and Lazarus Man (his newest out in 2024) and screenwriting efforts like The Color of Money., Not a writer to get pigeonholed into any particular genre, he also has written feature stories, magazine essays, and radio programs, and taught writing at Columbia, Yale and NYU.

 

Price earned degrees at Cornell and Columbia and also studied at Stanford before launching his successful writing career with The Wanderers, a coming-of-age story set in The Bronx and written when he was just 24 years old.   That book and Clockers also were adapted into movies.  

 

To date he has written 10 novels, 12 screenplays and 5 television screenplays.  His work has been praised for its blend of humor, suspense, dialogue, and character development.   The recipient of an American Arts & Letters Award and inductee into the American Arts & Letters Academy (in 2009), he lives and works in Harlem. 

 

“I think the definition of an artist is not necessarily tied into excellence or talent,” he said.  “An artist is somebody who, if you took away their freedom to make art, would lose their mind.”

A Writer's Moment: It's because 'of the love of words'

A Writer's Moment: It's because 'of the love of words':   “I always loved words.  I love to sing them and speak them and even now, I must admit, I have fallen into the joy of writing them.” – Anne...