A Writer's Moment: 'Writing stories for all the ages'

A Writer's Moment: 'Writing stories for all the ages':   “It's a wonderful thing to write for children.   I move between the two: I write an adult novel, and then I write a children's boo...

'Writing stories for all the ages'

 

“It's a wonderful thing to write for children.   I move between the two: I write an adult novel, and then I write a children's book. I quite enjoy that. It's a nice change of pace each time.” – John Boyne

  

Born in Ireland on this date in 1971, Boyne has authored 18 novels for adults and 7 for younger readers, publishing in over 50 languages. A graduate of Trinity College in Dublin – where he still makes his home – Boyne started writing in college and was first published at age 22.  His first adult novel (and still one of his most popular) was 2000’s A Thief Of Time.  

 

His multi-award winning 2006 novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas also was adapted into a popular movie by the same name, and in 2022 the sequel All The Broken Places was another huge bestseller.  Boyne’s most recent adult works are the 4-book series Water, Earth, Fire and Air, and for younger readers he authored The Dog Who Danced on the Moon in 2024.

 

“I think that books for young people should have serious and important themes, they shouldn’t be trivial,” he said.  “So the books I write, they would be the kind of stories you would write in an adult novel only they just happen to feature a child at the center of them.”

 

A Writer's Moment: 'Tools of thought and moral philosophy'

A Writer's Moment: 'Tools of thought':   “I think that novels are tools of thought. They are moral philosophy with the theory left out, with just the examples of the moral situati...

'Tools of thought'

 

“I think that novels are tools of thought. They are moral philosophy with the theory left out, with just the examples of the moral situations left standing.” – Jill Paton Walsh

 

Born in England on this date in 1937, Paton Walsh (who died in 2020) was a novelist and children's book writer, perhaps best known for her Booker Prize-nominated novel Knowledge of Angels, and the Peter Wimsey–Harriet Vane mysteries, a continuation of a series started by master British crime writer Dorothy Sayers.

 

Paton Walsh also earned considerable acclaim for a series featuring college nurse and part-time detective Imogine Quy, set at fictional St. Agatha College in Cambridge.  

 

But, while that is what many adults cite about her work, it probably is her children’s book audience that should be consulted first, since she penned more than two-dozen highly successful books for children and young adults, including the much honored A Chance Child and Grace.

 

An oft-traveled speaker, Paton Walsh still adhered to “the writer’s life.”  “However much travel one might do, however many tours and appearances,” she said, “the job entails solitude: long hours in libraries and long hours at a desk.”

 

A Writer's Moment: 'Right story, right time . . . and a bit of luck'

A Writer's Moment: 'Right story, right time . . . and a bit of luck': “I think writers have to be proactive: they've got to use new technology and social media. Yes, it's hard to get noticed by traditio...

'Right story, right time . . . and a bit of luck'

“I think writers have to be proactive: they've got to use new technology and social media. Yes, it's hard to get noticed by traditional publishers, but there's a great deal of opportunity out there if you've got the right story.” – Ian Rankin

 

Born in Scotland on this date in 1960, Rankin is best known for his “Inspector Rebus” novels.  But, he said he did not set out to be a crime writer and, in fact, didn’t think he had “the right story” at first.  

 

His first novels – Knots and Crosses and Hide and Seek – he listed as“mainstream,” keeping in the tradition of Robert Louis Stevenson and Muriel Spark.   But the publisher disagreed and listed them as crime fiction and the rest, as they say . . .  

 

So far, he’s had nearly 50 books published in the genre and 15 of them have not only been best sellers but also adapted for television movies – a record most writers would love.  

 

Celebrating his birthday at his home in Edinburgh, where he sets most of his novels, Rankin enjoys “schooling” his readers on the nuances of his home town, weaving little  details about the city throughout each book.

 

Rankin, whose first job was in his dad’s grocery store, has had lots of “life experiences” (always a plus for a writer).  He’s worked as a grape-picker, swineherd, taxman, alcohol researcher (I’d definitely like to hear more about that job), hi-fi journalist, college secretary, and punk musician in a band called The Dancing Pigs.

 

As for writing, he said, “You need a great idea, but then you've got to carry it through. If you get it right, you're going to be a critical success. But not everyone who works hard gets it right, or has the success they deserve: there's an element of luck.”

A Writer's Moment: Gifts that are 'immeasurable'

A Writer's Moment: Gifts that are 'immeasurable':   “The gifts that one receives for giving are so immeasurable that it is almost an injustice to accept them.”  – Rod McKuen Born in Oakla...

Gifts that are 'immeasurable'

 

“The gifts that one receives for giving are so immeasurable that it is almost an injustice to accept them.” – Rod McKuen

Born in Oakland, CA on April 29, 1933 McKuen was one of the best-selling poets in the United States during the 1960s and '70s.  By the time of his death in 2015 he had produced more than 30 books of poetry and hundreds of recordings of spoken word poetry, film soundtracks and classical music, earning two Academy Award nominations and one Pulitzer nomination along the way.  For Saturday’s Poem, here is McKuen’s,                                     

Twenty

People riding trains are nice

they offer magazines

and Chocolate-covered cherries,

they offer details you want most to know

                                      about their recent operations.

If I’d been riding home to you

I could have listened with both ears

but I was on my way away.

 

Across from me

there was a girl crying

                                    (long, silent tears)

while an old man held her hand.

It was only a while ago you said,

Take the seat by the window,

                                     you’ll see more.

 

I filled the seat beside me

with my coat and books.

I’m antisocial without you.

I’m antiworld and people too.

 

Sometimes I think

I’ll never ride a train again.

At least not away.

A Writer's Moment: 'Filled with things for our enjoyment'

A Writer's Moment: 'Filled with things for our enjoyment':   “Your attitude is like a box of crayons that color your world. Constantly color your picture gray, and your picture will always be bleak. ...

'Filled with things for our enjoyment'

 

“Your attitude is like a box of crayons that color your world. Constantly color your picture gray, and your picture will always be bleak. Try adding some bright colors to the picture by including humor, and your picture begins to lighten up.”—Allen Klein
 

Born in New York City on April 26, 1938 Klein is an American humorist, author and lecturer whose writings focus on the stress relieving benefits of humor.  His work in that field has led to myriad writings and 8 books.  And he is the recipient of The Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor’s “Lifetime Achievement Award.”

 

Among his books on the effectiveness of therapeutic humor is the best seller The Courage to Laugh: Humor, Hope, and Healing in the Face of Death and Dying.  Klein also has edited numerous “Happy” books of quotations, including Always Look on the Bright Side and Positive Thoughts for Troubling Times.

 

The term Eternal Optimist might not be a stretch in describing Klein.  “The lesson adults can learn (from using humor),” he said, “is that the world is filled with things for our enjoyment.”

A Writer's Moment: 'An itch that MUST be scratched'

A Writer's Moment: 'An itch that MUST be scratched':   “I've been to a lot of places and done a lot of things, but writing was always first. It's a kind of pain I can't do without.”...

'An itch that MUST be scratched'

 

“I've been to a lot of places and done a lot of things, but writing was always first. It's a kind of pain I can't do without.” – Robert Penn Warren

 

Born in Kentucky on this date in 1905, Penn Warren had the remarkable ability to put his reader both into a place and inside the lives of those about whom he was writing, whether it was in works of fiction or in his remarkable poetry.

 

Founder of the influential literary journal The Southern Review, he is the only person to win the Pulitzer Prize for both fiction and poetry, winning the latter award twice.  His first Pulitzer came for All The King’s Men, the 1947 novel about ruthless Louisiana politician Willie Stark.  It’s one of the few books to also be made into both a movie and an opera, with the movie version earning a Best Picture and Best Actor (Broderick Crawford) Academy Awards.

 

Penn Warren’s Pulitzers for poetry were awarded for Promises: Poems 1954-1956, which also won the National Book Award, and Now and Then.  In 1986 he was named America’s first. Poet Laureate.  Among his many other honors were The Presidential Medal of Freedom and The National Medal of Arts. 

 

 “How do poems grow?” Penn Warren wrote.  “They grow out of your life.   The urge to write poetry is like having an itch.  When the itch becomes annoying enough, you scratch it.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Finding purities in the confusion'

A Writer's Moment: 'Finding purities out of confusion':   “I'll tell you why I like writing: it's just jumping into a pool. I get myself into a kind of trance. I engage the world, but it...

'Finding purities in the confusion'

 

“I'll tell you why I like writing: it's just jumping into a pool. I get myself into a kind of trance. I engage the world, but it's also wonderful to just escape. I try to find the purities out of the confusion. It's pretty old-fashioned, but it's fun.” – Barry Hannah

 

Born on this date in 1942 (he died in 2010), Hannah was a novelist, short story writer and professor of writing at the University of Mississippi.   A “mostly” lifelong Mississippian, he was born in Meridian and died in Oxford, which is both the location of the University and the home of Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner.    

 

A two-time winner of the Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters’ “Fiction Prize” and the Governor’s Award for his representation of Mississippi in artistic and cultural matters, Hannah wrote 12 books – 5 of which were highly lauded short story collections.  Among his many other awards were the PEN/Malamud prize for “Excellence in the Art of the Short Story;” a Guggenheim Fellowship; and the Robert Penn Warren Lifetime Achievement Award.  

 

Hannah said that music always played a role in his writing, both on the pages of his works and filling the air around him as he did his writing.  

 

“Some writers are curiously unmusical. I don't get it. I don't get them,” he said.  “For me, music is essential. I always have music on when I'm doing well.  Musical phrases can give you sentences that you didn't think you ever had.”

 

A Writer's Moment: Cherishing the Earth

A Writer's Moment: Cherishing the Earth:   It’s the 55 th annual Earth Day and on its occasion I thought it appropriate to share just a few writers’ words reflective of the subject...

Cherishing the Earth

 

It’s the 55^th annual Earth Day and on its occasion I thought it appropriate to share just a few writers’ words reflective of the subject.  Happy Earth Day everyone!   

  

“We are only as much alive as we ourselves keep the earth alive.” – Chief Dan George

 

“There are places which exist in this world beyond the reach of imagination . . . Outside is the only place we can truly be inside the world.” – Daniel J. Rice, This Side of a Wilderness

 

“It seems to me nothing man has done or built on this land is an improvement over what was here before.” – Kent Haruf, West of Last Chance

 

And this take on “The Golden Rule” by author, farmer and conservationist Wendell Berry: “Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.”

 

Take a few minutes today to do even the simplest things for the earth.  Pick up a few scraps of paper.  Drive a few miles less.  Preserve a single glass of water.  Share deeds and words on behalf of our earth.  She is, after all, the only place we have on which to reside.

A Writer's Moment: 'Let my efforts be known by their results'

A Writer's Moment: 'Let my efforts be known by their results':   “I'm just going to write because I cannot help it.”  – Charlotte Bronte   Bronte, who lived to just age 39 before dying of typhus,...

'Let my efforts be known by their results'

 

“I'm just going to write because I cannot help it.” – Charlotte Bronte

 

Bronte, who lived to just age 39 before dying of typhus, was born on this date in 1816.  The oldest of 3 Bronte sisters who survived into adulthood (2 other sisters died of tuberculosis), she wrote novels that are still considered classics of English literature. 

 

Bronte gave us such statements as “The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter - often an unconscious, but still a truthful interpreter - in the eye.”  And “The human heart has hidden treasures, in secret kept, in silence sealed; the thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, whose charms were broken if revealed.”  She plowed new writing ground by combining naturalism with gothic melodrama.

  

A surrogate “mother” to 3 younger siblings (after their mother died following the birth of sister Anne) she began writing with sisters Emily and Anne, co-publishing a book of poetry under the pseudonym Bell – Charlotte as Currer; Emily as Ellis; and Anne as Acton.

 

While their poems did not succeed, the three women’s subsequent novels – Jane Eyre from Charlotte; Wuthering Heights from Emily; and Agnes Grey from Anne – were wildly successful and led to their revealing their real names to the writing world. 

 

Happy to just “produce” and not worry about being recognized for it, she noted, “If I could I would always work in silence and obscurity, and let my efforts be known by their results.”

A Writer's Moment: 'It begins in childhood'

A Writer's Moment: 'It begins in childhood': “I believe that poetry begins in childhood and that a poet who can remember his own childhood exactly can, and should, communicate to childr...

'It begins in childhood'

“I believe that poetry begins in childhood and that a poet who can remember his own childhood exactly can, and should, communicate to children.” – William Jay Smith

 

Born in Louisiana on April 22, 1918 Smith was U.S. Poet Laureate from 1968-70, the first Native American to hold the post.  He also served as longtime Poet-in-Residence at Williams College and wrote 50 books of poetry, including the multiple award-winning children’s book Laughing Time.   For Saturday’s Poem, here is Smith’s,

 

      The World Below The Window

The geraniums I left last night on the windowsill,
To the best of my knowledge now, are out there still,
And will be there as long as I think they will.

And will be there as long as I think that I
Can throw the window open on the sky,
A touch of geranium pink in the tail of my eye;

As long as I think I see, past leaves green-growing,
Barges moving down a river, water flowing,
Fulfillment in the thought of thought outgoing,

Fulfillment in the sight of sight replying,
Of sound in the sound of small birds southward flying,
In life life-giving, and in death undying.

A Writer's Moment: 'A new thing in an old way'

A Writer's Moment: 'A new thing in an old way':   "The secret of good writing is to say an old thing in a new way or to say a new thing in an old way." –  Richard Harding Davis ...

'A new thing in an old way'

 

"The secret of good writing is to say an old thing in a new way or to say a new thing in an old way." – Richard Harding Davis

 

Born in Philadelphia on this date in 1864, Davis played an outsized role in American life through both his reporting skills and his works of fiction and drama.  He was the first American war correspondent to cover 3 wars – Spanish-American, Boer and WWI – his reporting often credited for the wild popularity of Theodore Roosevelt’s Roughriders.

 

The son of two prominent writers – Rebecca Harding Davis, a successful creative writer and playwright, and Lemuel Davis, a leading journalist – he served as managing editor of Harper’s Weekly, setting editorial standards that nearly all other magazines strove to emulate. 

 

He had many successful novels including the bestselling Soldiers of Fortune – also adapted into two different movies.  And he authored 25 plays, hundreds of newspaper features, and several nonfiction books, led by his massive bestseller Notes of a War Correspondent.   

                                         

Constantly on the move and maintaining an arduous work schedule, Davis died of a heart attack just days shy of his 52^nd birthday (in 2016) while working on deadline for yet another story.

 

“That the situation appears hopeless,” he once said, “still should not prevent us from doing our best.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Creatiing' from freedom and flexibility

A Writer's Moment: 'Creating' from freedom and flexibility:   “The deadlines are much, much longer with books. When I was a reporter, a lot of times I'd come in at 8:30 a.m., get an assignment rig...

'Creating' from freedom and flexibility

 

“The deadlines are much, much longer with books. When I was a reporter, a lot of times I'd come in at 8:30 a.m., get an assignment right away, interview somebody, turn the story in by 9:30, and have the finished story in the paper that landed on my desk by noon.” – Margaret Haddix

 

“Write tight and write quick” are the daily mantras for journalists, and how Haddix, born in April of 1964, started her writing career.  She worked on newspapers in Fort Wayne and Indianapolis, Indiana before switching to the creative side in the mid-1990s and has never looked back.

Best known for her series’ Shadow Children and The Missing and her stand-alone books Running Out of Time and The Girl With 500 Middle Names, she has authored more than 50 books and won the International Reading Association’s Children’s Book Award for her body of work.  Her most recent book is 2024’s The Secret Key in her newest series Mysteries of Trash and Treasure.

 

Haddix said she’s very glad she switched from Journalism to the creative side three decades ago.   “It's just so much fun to make up characters, situations, and everything else about a story,” she said.  “I have so much freedom and flexibility to do whatever I want.”

A Writer's Moment: Embracing All; Excluding None

A Writer's Moment: Embracing All; Excluding None:   I don't want my books to exclude anyone, but if they have to, then I would rather they excluded the people who feel they are too smart...

Embracing All; Excluding None

 

I don't want my books to exclude anyone, but if they have to, then I would rather they excluded the people who feel they are too smart for them!” – Nick Hornby

 

Hornby, born in England on April 17, 1957 writes about “ordinary people” in ways that translate into bestsellers like Fever Pitch, About a Boy, and High Fidelity.  Fever Pitch, while written about a fan’s obsession (based on his own) with English soccer, was made an even bigger hit as an American movie adaptation, where it focused on Jimmy Fallon’s character’s obsession with the Boston Red Sox.

 

His most recent novel is 2020s Just Like You, and in 2022 he released the nonfiction book Dickens and Prince.

 

Also dedicated to helping kids with special needs, Hornby has donated many of his royalties – from nearly 6 million copies of his books sold – to helping kids with autism.  And, he co-founded the nonprofit Ministry of Stories to help children and young adults develop their writing skills, and to support teachers who inspire students to write.

 

“All the books we own” Hornby said, “both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Embrace ALL the possibilities'

A Writer's Moment: 'Embrace ALL the possibilities':   “Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.” – Henry James   Born in Ne...

'Embrace ALL the possibilities'

 

“Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.” – Henry James

 

Born in New York City on this date in 1843, James aspired to be a writer while still in elementary school and was into a full-time writing career by his late teens.  By his mid-20s he already was regarded as one of the most skillful writers in America.  Ultimately, he relocated to Europe and eventually settled in England for the last 40 years of his life.

 

A major figure in trans-Atlantic literature, he developed a fundamental theme of the innocence and exuberance of the New World clashing with the corruption and wisdom of the Old; a theme illustrated in novels like Daisy Miller (1879), The Portrait of a Lady (1881), and The Bostonians (1886).

 

James wrote hundreds of short stories, novels, books of criticism, travel, biography, autobiography, and plays, earning numerous writing awards along the way.  He was thrice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. 

 

In an interview shortly before his death in 1915, he passed along this advice to aspiring writers:  "Live all you can; it's a mistake not to,” he said.  Adding, “I think I don't regret a single 'excess' of my responsive youth - I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn't embrace,”

A Writer's Moment: 'A witness to what is around'

A Writer's Moment: 'A witness to what is around':   “A writer is not a prophet, is not a philosopher; he's just someone who is witness to what is around him.” –  J. M. G. Le Clézio   ...

'A witness to what is around'

 

“A writer is not a prophet, is not a philosopher; he's just someone who is witness to what is around him.” – J. M. G. Le Clézio

 

Born in France on this date in 1940, Le Clézio won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature.   The author of over 40 works, he was awarded the 1963 Prix Renaudot for his masterpiece novel Le Procès-Verbal, and was the first winner of the Grand Prix Paul Morand, awarded by the Académie Française for his novel Désert.   

 

Called by the Nobel committee "… (an) author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, (and) explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.” Le Clézio began writing at age 7 and was published while still in his teens.   In addition to his many books, he has authored myriad short stories, essays, two translations on the subject of Native American mythology, and several children's books.  

 

During the past two decades he also has been known for his travel writing and has taught in both Korea and China.  His most recent works are the novella On The Wrong Side in 2023, and the nonfiction book Identité nomade in 2024.

 

“I don't have any office; I can write everywhere. So, I put a piece of paper on the table, and then I travel.  Literally, writing for me is like travelling.  It's getting out of myself and living another life - maybe a better life.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Cutting through the noise'

A Writer's Moment: 'Cutting through the noise':   “Poetry cuts through the noise of other words, like a prayer. It wakes us. It finds us. It witnesses life simultaneously at its most consc...

'Cutting through the noise'

 

“Poetry cuts through the noise of other words, like a prayer. It wakes us. It finds us. It witnesses life simultaneously at its most conscious and its most hidden. A poem is always about what it means to be alive and mortal.” – Anne Michaels

 

Born in Toronto, Canada on April 15, 1958 Michaels has won dozens of international awards and had her work translated and published in nearly 50 countries. The recipient of the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the Americas and the Canadian Authors' Association Award, she also is an award winner for her fiction, especially the highly lauded novel Fugitive Pieces (also made into a successful film).  Her most recent novel is 2023's Held.   For Saturday’s Poem, here is Michaels’,

  

                  Flowers

There’s another skin inside my skin

that gathers to your touch, a lake to the light;

that looses its memory, its lost language

into your tongue,

erasing me into newness.

 

Just when the body thinks it knows

the ways of knowing itself,

this second skin continues to answer.

 

In the street – café chairs abandoned

on terraces; market stalls emptied

of their solid light,

though pavement still breathes

summer grapes and peaches.

Like the light of anything that grows

from this newly-turned earth,

every tip of me gathers under your touch,

wind wrapping my dress around our legs,

Your shirt twisting to flowers in my fists.

 

A Writer's Moment: 'The chance to use your voice'

A Writer's Moment: 'The chance to use your voice':   "In journalism, there has always been a tension between getting it first and getting it right."  – Ellen Goodman   Born in M...

'The chance to use your voice'

 

"In journalism, there has always been a tension between getting it first and getting it right." – Ellen Goodman

 

Born in Massachusetts on this date in 1941, Goodman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author of 8 books, and a frequent speaker and commentator on society and social issues.

                                                                                                                              

After earning a degree in history at Radcliffe, she gravitated to writing after taking a “temporary” job as a researcher at Newsweek magazine. After working as a reporter at the Detroit Free Press and the Boston Globe, she started writing on social issues and soon was presenting her thoughts in a column read by millions around the world.

 

She was the first woman to be published on a major newspaper's Op-Ed Page and the first to have a regular column, joining the Washington Post Writers Group in 1976 where her groundbreaking writings have inspired action for decades.

 

Honored by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists with the “Ernie Pyle Award for Lifetime Achievement,” she also is the recipient of the American Society of News Editors’ Distinguished Writing Award, the Hubert H. Humphrey Civil Rights Award, and the National Women’s Political Caucus President's Award.  

 

“I think that having a job in journalism, despite all of the changes, is still a fantastic way to be – to make a living observing your society and having a chance to use your voice.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Right Choice-ing' at the fork in the road

A Writer's Moment: 'Right Choice-ing' at the fork in the road:   “The films of which I'm most proud I've written are the ones that pivot on forgiveness.” – Peter Morgan   Born in England on t...

'Right Choice-ing' at the fork in the road

 

“The films of which I'm most proud I've written are the ones that pivot on forgiveness.” – Peter Morgan

 

Born in England on this date in 1963, Morgan is best known for his historical films and plays The Queen and Frost/Nixon, and for creating Netflix’s wildly successful series The Crown.   He also co-wrote the screenplay for the award-winning movie The Last King of Scotland.  

 

The son of immigrants who fled to Great Britain to escape the Nazis (his father) and Soviet repression (his mother), he started writing while at the University of Leeds. His big breakthrough came with The Queen, for which he won a Golden Globe and the lead actor Helen Mirren an Academy Award.   Since then, everything he’s written has been successful and influential, for which he was honored with the Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to drama.

 

 “As a dramatist, you have 200 choices at every fork in the road,” he said.   “But the audience will reject it if you make the wrong choice, if they feel you are trying to shape the character in a way that suits you.  It rings false immediately.  People can sense when you're being cynical or schematic.”

A Writer's Moment: Every day an adventure'

A Writer's Moment: Every day an adventure':   “Mystery writing involves solving a puzzle, but 'high suspense' writing is a situation whereby the writer thrusts the hero/heroine...

Every day an adventure'

 

“Mystery writing involves solving a puzzle, but 'high suspense' writing is a situation whereby the writer thrusts the hero/heroine into high drama.” – Iris Johansen

  

Born in St. Louis in April of 1938, Johansen was working as a flight attendant when she decided to try writing – bored with the romance novels she liked to read.  

 

After early successes in the Romance genre, she began writing Historical Romance suspense novels in 1991 with the publication of The Wind Dancer, then settled into suspense writing with her bestselling crime fiction thriller Ugly Duckling in 1996.   A self-described “voracious” writer, she now has written 116 books, her latest being On The Hunt in 2024. 

 

Writing is a family affair for Johansen.  Her son Roy is an Edgar Award-winning screenwriter and novelist and has co-written 15 books with his mom.  Her daughter Tamara serves as her research assistant.  

 

Her myriad fans say Johansen’s writing often leaves them spellbound. 

 

“The greatest compliment a writer can be given is that a story and character hold a reader spellbound,” she said, adding that she can’t wait to get back to her writing each day.  “Every day should be an adventure, not a treadmill.”

A Writer's Moment: Writing with 'a terrible honesty'

A Writer's Moment: Writing with 'a terrible honesty':   “I don't like poetry that doesn't give me a sense of ritual; but I don't like poetry that doesn't sound like people talkin...

Writing with 'a terrible honesty'

 

“I don't like poetry that doesn't give me a sense of ritual; but I don't like poetry that doesn't sound like people talking to each other. I try to do both at once.” – Miller Williams

 

Born in Hoxie, AR on this date in 1930, Williams was studying to become a zoologist when his love of writing got in the way.  By the time of his death in 2015 he had produced some 40 books, created and read a poem at the Presidential Inauguration of fellow Arkansan Bill Clinton, and helped found The University of Arkansas Press.

 

His first collection of poems, Et Centera, was published while he was still an undergraduate student in biology at Arkansas State University.  His treatise on writing poetry, “Making a Poem: Some Thoughts About Poetry and the People Who Write It,” is regularly studied in colleges and universities around the world.    

 

A critic once wrote that Miller had "a terrible honesty" and "(wrote) about ordinary people in the extraordinary moments of their lives."   

 

Among his many awards were the Porter Prize Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement in Writing, the National Poets’ Prize – for his collection Living on the Surface – and the National Arts Award for his lifelong contribution to the arts. 

 

“I respond to mood. I hear some phrase, or pick up a rhythm,” he said of his writing style.  “I always have pen and paper with me.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Drawing from life . . . as you see it'

A Writer's Moment: 'Drawing from life . . . as you see it':   “[The writer] must essentially draw from life as he sees it, lives it, overhears it or steals it, and the truer the writer, perhaps the bi...

'Drawing from life . . . as you see it'

 

“[The writer] must essentially draw from life as he sees it, lives it, overhears it or steals it, and the truer the writer, perhaps the bigger the blackguard. He lives by biting the hand that feeds him.” – Charles R. Jackson

 

Born in New Jersey on April 6, 1903 Jackson wrote several bestselling novels, including The Lost Weekend, also adapted into an Academy Award-winning Best Picture.  The novel – his first – and subsequent film thrust Jackson into a limelight in which he wasn’t always comfortable, although he did enjoy a fairly distinguished lecture circuit career from the book and film successes.

 

At Syracuse University he studied journalism and wrote for a number of newspapers before gravitating to books – both writing and selling them.  He wrote several more novels, a number of well-received short stories, and had a very successful stint as a scriptwriter for radio soap operas.  

 

Hospitalized for a number of years with tuberculosis and alcoholism, Jackson took about a 15-year break before writing one more successful book, the semi-autobiographical novel A Second-Hand Life, shortly before his death in 1968.

 

During his long hiatus, Jackson blamed the demise more to his inability to handle his early successes rather than his  illnesses.  “The writer knows his own worth,” he lamented, “and to be overvalued can confuse and destroy him as an artist.”

A Writer's Moment: 'A wise woman, indeed'

A Writer's Moment: 'A wise woman, indeed':   “A wise woman wishes to be no one's enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone's victim.”  –  Maya Angelou Born in St. Louis on Ap...

'A wise woman, indeed'

 

“A wise woman wishes to be no one's enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone's victim.” –  Maya Angelou

Born in St. Louis on April 4, 1928, Angelou was a poet, singer, memoirist, and civil rights activist and recipient of dozens of awards.  She was presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom and more than 50 honorary degrees before her death in 2014.    For Saturday’s Poem, here is Angelou’s,                                                                                                                         

                             When You Come

            When you come to me, unbidden,
                         Beckoning me
                         To long-ago rooms,
                         Where memories lie.

                         Offering me, as to a child, an attic,
                         Gatherings of days too few.
                         Baubles of stolen kisses.
                         Trinkets of borrowed loves.
                         Trunks of secret words,

                          I CRY.