A Writer's Moment: 'Laborers of the word; passionate in presentation'

A Writer's Moment: 'Laborers of the word; passionate in presentation':   “I see journalists as the manual workers, the laborers of the word. Journalism can only be literature when it is passionate.”  – Marguerit...

'Laborers of the word; passionate in presentation'

 

“I see journalists as the manual workers, the laborers of the word. Journalism can only be literature when it is passionate.” – Marguerite Duras

 

Duras, a French novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and experimental filmmaker, was born in French Indochina (Vietnam) on April 4, 1914 and grew up there in poverty before running away from home as a teenager to live and write in France. 

 

While she was, indeed, a "passionate" journalist, she also was the author of many novels, plays, films and works of short fiction.  Her best-known tales recalled her affair with a rich landowner’s son while still living in Vietnam, led by the best-selling, fictionalized autobiographical work L'Amant, translated into English as The Lover.  That book won her the prestigious Goncourt Prize.   Variations on her teenage affair also appear in The Sea Wall, Eden Cinema and The North China Lover.

 

Awarded France's national theater prize, “The Grand Prix du Théâtre de l’Académie Française,” in recognition of her lifetime body of work, she also was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for her film Hiroshima mon amour.

 

Duras's many essays often spoke to human rights and issues of social justice.  “Journalism without a moral position is impossible,” she said.  “I believe every journalist is a moralist. It's absolutely unavoidable.”

A Writer's Moment: How to 'fortify your inner life'

A Writer's Moment: How to 'fortify your inner life':   “If poetry and the arts do anything, they can fortify your inner life, your inwardness.” – Seamus Heaney   Born in Ireland in April o...

How to 'fortify your inner life'

 

“If poetry and the arts do anything, they can fortify your inner life, your inwardness.” – Seamus Heaney

 

Born in Ireland in April of 1939, Heaney is widely recognized as one the 20th century’s major poets. Author of more than 20 volumes of poetry and criticism, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past."     For Saturday’s Poem, here is Heaney’s,

 

                                                                        Follower

My father worked with a horse-plough,
His shoulders globed like a full sail strung
Between the shafts and the furrow.
The horse strained at his clicking tongue.

An expert. He would set the wing
And fit the bright steel-pointed sock.
The sod rolled over without breaking.
At the headrig, with a single pluck

Of reins, the sweating team turned round
And back into the land. His eye
Narrowed and angled at the ground,
Mapping the furrow exactly.

I stumbled in his hob-nailed wake,
Fell sometimes on the polished sod;
Sometimes he rode me on his back
Dipping and rising to his plod.

I wanted to grow up and plough,
To close one eye, stiffen my arm.
All I ever did was follow
In his broad shadow round the farm.

I was a nuisance, tripping, falling,
Yapping always. But today
It is my father who keeps stumbling
Behind me, and will not go away.

 

 

A Writer's Moment: 'Our most precious gifts'

A Writer's Moment: 'Our most precious gifts':   “A kind heart is a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity freshen into smiles.”  –  Washington Irving    Born in New York...

'Our most precious gifts'

 “A kind heart is a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity freshen into smiles.” –  Washington Irving

 

 Born in New York City on this date in 1783, Irving wrote from 1820 up until just before his death in 1859.   In fact, just eight months before his death (at age 76, in Tarrytown, NY), he completed a definitive five-volume biography The Life of George Washington.

 

Along with James Fenimore Cooper, Irving was among the first American writers to earn acclaim in Europe.  And, he offered encouragement and support to upcoming American authors like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Edgar Allan Poe, leading to the development of a true “American” literary style.  His writings, like The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, have stood the test of time, read, referenced and studied by generations of students.

 

Irving also was one of America’s leading diplomats and his thoughtful attention to other cultures and religions helped establish our young nation on the world stage.  In his later years, he offered this sage advice to fellow diplomats and writers alike:

 

“Remember, an inexhaustible good nature is one of the most precious gifts of heaven, spreading itself like oil over the troubled sea of thought, and keeping the mind smooth and equable in even the roughest weather.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Maddening, and yet so fascinating'

A Writer's Moment: 'Maddening, and yet so fascinating':   “For every path you choose, there is another you must abandon, usually forever.” – Joan D. Vinge   Born in Baltimore on this date in ...

'Maddening, and yet so fascinating'

 “For every path you choose, there is another you must abandon, usually forever.” – Joan D. Vinge

 

Born in Baltimore on this date in 1948, Vinge is best known for such works as her Hugo Award-winning novel The Snow Queen and its sequels, and her novelization of movies like Tarzan: King of the Apes, Lost In Space and Cowboys & Aliens. 

 

After studying at San Diego State and starting her career as an anthropologist, Vinge turned to writing and made it a full-time career change after the success of Snow Queen in 1980.  Besides her award for that novel, she also won a Hugo for Best Novelette for her tale "Eyes of Amber” and has been nominated for several other Hugo and Nebula Awards.   Her novel Psion was named a Best Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association.   She has written 11 novels, 3 collections of short stories, 4 of poetry and 12 TV and movie adaptations.   She has been lauded for her strong, engrossing characters.  

 

“The contradictions are what make human behavior so maddening,” she said, “and yet so fascinating, all at the same time.”

A Writer's Moment: 'What writing is all about, after all'

A Writer's Moment: 'What writing is all about, after all':   “The thing is, emotion - if it's visibly felt by the writer - will go through all the processes it takes to publish a story and still ...

'What writing is all about, after all'

 

“The thing is, emotion - if it's visibly felt by the writer - will go through all the processes it takes to publish a story and still hit the reader right in the gut. But you have to really mean it.” – Anne McCaffrey

 

 Born in Massachusetts on this date in 1926, McCaffrey was one of the all-time great writers of fantasy and science fiction (she died in 2011).  Best known for her Dragonriders of Pern fantasy series, she became the first woman to win a Hugo Award for fiction and a Nebula Award for excellence in science fiction. Her 1978 novel The White Dragon was one of the first science-fiction books to appear on the New York Times Best Seller list.

 

A Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductee, she was only the 22^nd person ever selected as a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.  

 

A graduate of Radcliffe, McCaffrey studied music and contemplated an operatic career before becoming a writer.  After achieving her writing success, she moved to Ireland where she became a naturalized citizen and lived until her death in 2011.    

 

McCaffrey set Sci-Fi standards for writing with emotion and putting the reader directly into the worlds she created. “That's what writing is all about, after all,” she said, “making others see what you have put down on the page and believing that it does, or could, exist and you want to go there.”

A Writer's Moment: 'It's why novelists write'

A Writer's Moment: 'It's why novelists write':   “There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.”  – John Fowle...

'It's why novelists write'

 

“There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.” – John Fowles

 

Born in England on this date in 1926, Fowles wrote many thoughtful and thought-provoking things about the profession of writing, even though the writing world wasn’t his first career choice.  Fowles set out to be a teacher, taking a job at a small school in Greece that later became the setting for his book The Magus.  Even though he had that novel ready to go in 1960, he held off trying to get it published in order to finish a second manuscript called The Collector.  It was a “second” first novel that would establish his international reputation as a major writer. 

 

Published in 1963, The Collector went on to a massive release, noted by the publisher as "probably the highest price that had hitherto been paid for a first novel.”  By 1965 it also had been made into a nail-biting movie. 

 

With his reputation established, he then published The Magus, which was a moderate hit, and followed them both with his blockbuster The French Lieutenant's Woman.  Released to critical and popular success, it was eventually translated into a dozen languages and adapted as a feature film starring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons.  

 

In his lifetime he published 19 books and while fiction was his forte’, he also was a noted essayist, taught English as a foreign language to immigrant children, and earned further accolades as a poet – something he said should not be considered unusual.    

 

“We all write poems,” he noted.  “It is simply that real poets are the ones who write in words.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Good People, Great Impact'

A Writer's Moment: 'Good People, Great Impact':   “My doctrine is this: If we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt. C...

'Good People, Great Impact'

 

“My doctrine is this: If we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt. Cruelty and oppression … is everybody’s business to interfere with when they see it.” – Anna Sewell 

 

Born in Great Yarmouth, England on this date in 1820, Sewell embedded herself in our culture and concern for animal welfare with her classic novel Black Beauty, written in 1877 while she was nearing death from tuberculosis.  It is her only published work. The novel, since made into several movies as well, is one of the best-selling books of all time. 

 

Sewell died in April of 1878, less than five months after Black Beauty’s publication, but she lived long enough to see the beginnings of its impact and success.  Although originally written for those who worked with horses, it also reflects Sewell's views on how to treat people with kindness, sympathy and respect.

 

“It is good people who make good places,” Sewell said. 

A Writer's Moment: 'Timeless offerings'

A Writer's Moment: 'Timeless offerings':   “The kinds of things that poetry can offer are timeless – mainly the kind of compression it offers of powerful language, powerful feelings...

'Timeless offerings'

 

“The kinds of things that poetry can offer are timeless – mainly the kind of compression it offers of powerful language, powerful feelings and images, and, you know, the inner experiences becoming outer.” – Brenda Hillman

 

Born in Tucson, Ariz. in March of 1951, Hillman has received numerous awards and fellowships including a Pushcart Prize and the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award.  Her collection Bright Existence was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Loose Sugar a finalist for the National Book Critic’s Circle Award.   For Saturday’s Poem, here is Hillman’s,

 

                                                                 Glacial Erratics

                                             The last ice age had been caused by a wobble.

                                             After it passed they made houses from stars;

 

                                             Visitors would peer in

                                             And see the tongs not slipping,

 

                                             Roomsized pebbles having been moved far.

 

                                             It’s like this more

                                             When we speak than when we write;

 

                                             Loving thus we have been

                                             Loved by ground,

 

                                             The word being

                                             A box with four of its corners hidden;

 

                                             Everything else is round.

A Writer's Moment: From fragments to powerful feelings

A Writer's Moment: From fragments to powerful feelings:   “The kinds of things that poetry can offer are timeless - mainly the kind of compression it offers of powerful language, powerful feelings...

From fragments to powerful feelings

 

“The kinds of things that poetry can offer are timeless - mainly the kind of compression it offers of powerful language, powerful feelings and images, and, you know, the inner experience becoming outer.” – Brenda Hillman

 

Born in Tucson, Ariz., on this date in 1951, Hillman is the author of 11 collections of poetry, including Bright Existence; Practical Water, for which she won the LA Times Book Award for Poetry, and Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire, which earned her both the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Northern California Book Award for Poetry.  Her most recent book is 2024’s In a Few Minutes Before Later.

 

A “writer” of poetry since age 9, Hillman is known for poems that draw on elements of found texts and documents, personal meditation, and observation on everything from geology to spirituality.

 

Recipient of the 2025 PEN Oakland "Reginald Lockett Lifetime Achievement Award," she also serves as the Olivia Filippi Chair in Poetry at Saint Mary’s College of California and is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.  

                                              

“The techniques of contemporary poetry are probably the techniques of your daily life,” she says.   “I don't know a single person who goes into the grocery store and thinks in complete sentences.  We often think in fragments, we think in little lists, we think in non-sequiturs, we think in feelings that may not match up with each other.”

A Writer's Moment: How to 'express almost inexpressible feelings'

A Writer's Moment: How to 'express almost inexpressible feelings':   “People always think that history proceeds in a straight line. It doesn't. Social attitudes don't change in a straight line. There...

How to 'express almost inexpressible feelings'

 

“People always think that history proceeds in a straight line. It doesn't. Social attitudes don't change in a straight line. There's always a backlash against progressive ideas.” – Erica Jong

 

Born in New York City on March 26, 1942 Jong is a satirist, poet and novelist, best known for her novels Fear of Flying, which has sold nearly 40 million copies worldwide, and the award-winning Shylock’s Daughter. 

 

Jong earned degrees from Barnard and Columbia, where she majored in English Literature, and started writing for magazines and journals before trying her hand at fiction.  Fear of Flying was her first effort and catapulted her into a successful lifelong career, authoring 11 novels, 8 nonfiction books, and 7 books of poetry.  Her body of work has earned her the United Nations’ Award for Excellence in Literature.

 

Jong said that despite her great success with fiction, she enjoys poetry best.  Her most recent book of poems is The World Began With Yes.  

 

“In poetry you can express almost inexpressible feelings,” she said.   “You can express the pain of loss; you can express love. People always turn to poetry when someone they love dies; when they fall in love.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Revealing whatever you might find'

A Writer's Moment: 'Revealing whatever you might find':   “Whether writing fiction or nonfiction, I've never had the sense I was 'making up' a character. It feels more like watching pe...

'Revealing whatever you might find'

 

“Whether writing fiction or nonfiction, I've never had the sense I was 'making up' a character. It feels more like watching people reveal themselves, ever more deeply, more intimately.” – Kathryn Harrison

 

Born in Los Angeles in March of 1960, Harrison earned degrees at both Stanford and the University of Iowa, where she first studied in that school’s famed Writers’ Workshop.  Her debut novel, Thicker Than Water, was an instant success and paved the way for a career that (to date) includes 8 novels and 9 nonfiction books, including one about true crime.  Her most recent nonfiction work is On Sunset.

 

Almost as well known for her essays, which have been included in many anthologies and magazines like Harper's, The New Yorker and Vogue, she also is a regular reviewer for The New York Times Book Review.   And, she teaches memoir writing in the Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing at New York’s Hunter College. 

 

“I admire writers who succeed at what I consider the first demand of art,” she said.  “(And that is) that the artist vivisect himself without pity, without hesitation, determined to reveal whatever he might find.”

A Writer's Moment: 'It's how we go on'

A Writer's Moment: 'It's how we go on':   “A good novel is an out-of-self experience. It lifts you off the ground so that you have the sensation of flying. It says, 'Look at th...

'It's how we go on'

 

“A good novel is an out-of-self experience. It lifts you off the ground so that you have the sensation of flying. It says, 'Look at the world around you; learn from the people in these pages, neither quite me nor quite you, how life is lived in so many different ways.’” – Julia Glass

 

In 2002, Glass’s debut novel Three Junes got off to a very good liftoff, indeed, winning the National Book Award for Fiction.  Since then, she’s led a very good writing life having half-a-dozen more novels published, all to excellent reviews, her most recent being Vigil Harbor.

 

Born on this date in 1956, Glass said, “My life has been wonderful, but if I had to live the life of someone else, I'd gladly choose that of Julia Child or Dr. Seuss: two outrageously original people, each of whom fashioned an idiosyncratic wisdom, passion for life, and sense of humor into an art form that anyone and everyone could savor.”

 

A native of Boston who grew up in Belmont, Mass., she took a couple of divergent life paths, first moving to Brooklyn, NY, after college (at Yale) to become a painter, then trying her hand at magazine editing at Cosmopolitan before taking a stab at creative writing.  She now lives back in Massachusetts, teaches fictional writing at Emerson College, and continues to write as a journalist and novelist.

 

“All the best novels are about one thing: How we go on,” she said.  “The characters must survive the fallout of their own cowardice, folly, denial or misguided passion. They squander what matters most, and still they pick up the pieces.”

A Writer's Moment: 'As sweet as a dance'

A Writer's Moment: 'As sweet as a dance':   “Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking.” – John Barrington Wain  Born in England in March of 1925, Wain was a prolific poet, nove...

'As sweet as a dance'

 

“Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking.” – John Barrington Wain 

Born in England in March of 1925, Wain was a prolific poet, novelist and journalist, associated with the post-WWII literary group known as "The Movement.”  Led by the award-winning Hurry On Down and Young Shoulders, he wrote 14 novels, 3 short story collections and 9 collections of poetry, including the much-lauded Letters To Five Artists.  For Saturday’s Poem, here is Wain’s,

                                Outside, gulls squabbled in the empty street

                                       Outside, gulls squabbled in the empty street.  Criticism

                                       and name-calling.  Salt air scrubbed the gleaming

                                       Sunday morning walls.  Gutter-split stalks, leaves, fueled the

                                       squalling

                                       and wheeling.  Feet, motors, slept. The inured citizens

                                       turned over to snore again.  Beside me, my darling

 

                                       slept in a deeper peace, like a princess in a fable

                                       all through the sea-clean, gull-torn dawn, slept below

                                       dreaming,

                                       stunned by those hours of outrageous bliss, bliss upon bliss,

                                       when love leapt higher than even the fiercest lovers were able.

                                          Patient, I lay, expecting tea and her morning kiss.

A Writer's Moment: 'The need to share responsibility'

A Writer's Moment: 'The need to share responsibility':   “Knowing that we can be loved exactly as we are gives us all the best opportunity for growing into the healthiest of people.” – Fred Roge...

'The need to share responsibility'

 

“Knowing that we can be loved exactly as we are gives us all the best opportunity for growing into the healthiest of people.” – Fred Rogers

 

Probably no other person had as much impact on children’s television as Fred McFeely Rogers, born on March 20, 1928 and famous, of course, for creating and hosting “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” on PBS.  Initially planning to be a minister, Rogers found himself displeased with how television addressed children and made an effort to write things that could cause change.  In the process he became an indelible icon of children’s entertainment and education, as well as a symbol of compassion and morality. 

 

At the time of his death (from cancer in 2003) he had been honored with some 40 honorary degrees, a Peabody Award for his writing, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  He also was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame, the first “Children’s Advocate” so named.    Subsequently honored with two Congressional resolutions, he is ranked among the 35 Greatest TV Stars of All Time.

 

The author of 31 books for kids and a dozen more for adults, he also was a great musician, recording a number of songs and writing several song books. The 2019 drama film "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” tells the story of Rogers and his television series, with Rogers' distant relative Tom Hanks giving a lasting portrayal of his legacy – which lives on.

 

“We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility,” he said.  “It's easy to say, ‘It's not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem.’ Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes”.

A Writer's Moment: 'It's every novelist's obsession'

A Writer's Moment: 'It's every novelist's obsession':   “The novelist's obsession, moment by moment, is with language: finding the right next word. “ – Philip Roth   Born in Newark, NJ on...

'It's every novelist's obsession'

 

“The novelist's obsession, moment by moment, is with language: finding the right next word. “ – Philip Roth
 

Born in Newark, NJ on this date in 1933, Roth jumped into a writing career with a bang, his first book, Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories, winning the National Book Award.

  

It was the first of two National Book Awards and two Book Critics Circle Awards for Roth.  One of America’s most honored writers, he also won the Man Booker International Prize, the PEN/Faulkner Award (three times), and the Pulitzer Prize (for his novel American Pastoral).

 

Roth's fiction, regularly set in his native Newark, is known for its intensely autobiographical character, and for philosophically and formally blurring the distinction between reality and fiction.  “Literature isn't a moral beauty contest,” Roth said.  “Its power arises from the authority and audacity with which the impersonation is pulled off; the belief it inspires is what counts.”  

 

Roth, who died in 2018, wrote 4 collections of short stories and 29 novels, including Portnoy’s Complaint, The Human Stain and The Plot Against America.  Eight of his works were adapted into movies.

                        

“It was my great problem to solve: 'How to write a book,' you know?” he said.   “And after you write one, you have to write another to prove to yourself you can do it again.”

A Writer's Moment: Absorbing the rhythms of the world

A Writer's Moment: Absorbing the rhythms of the world:   “What makes me write is the rhythm of the world around me - the rhythms of the language, of course, but also of the land, the wind, the sk...

Absorbing the rhythms of the world

 

“What makes me write is the rhythm of the world around me - the rhythms of the language, of course, but also of the land, the wind, the sky, other lives. Before the words comes the rhythm - that seems to me to be of the essence.” – John Burnside

 

Born in Scotland on this date in 1955, Burnside was one of only two writers to win both the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Poetry Prize for the same book.  Burnside’s Black Cat Bone took home the prestigious awards in 2011.  He also won the Whitbread Award for The Asylum Dance.

 

Burnside, who died from illness in 2024, authored 8 nonfiction books, 11 novels and 23 poetry collections, the last being The Empire of Forgetting, published posthumously in 2025.   He also wrote numerous short stories, essays, and two award-winning memoirs, A Lie About My Father and Waking Up In Toytown, and was honored with Great Britain’s "David Cohen Prize” for lifetime achievement in literature.

 

“I love long sentences,” he said of his writing style.  “My big heroes of fiction writing are Henry James and (Marcel) Proust – people who recognize that life doesn't consist of declarative statements, but rather modifications, qualifications and feelings.”

A Writer's Moment: 'A wonderfully flexible form'

A Writer's Moment: 'A wonderfully flexible form':   “The pleasure of writing fiction is that you are always spotting some new approach, an alternative way of telling a story and manipulating...

'A wonderfully flexible form'

 

“The pleasure of writing fiction is that you are always spotting some new approach, an alternative way of telling a story and manipulating characters; the novel is such a wonderfully flexible form.  You learn a lot, writing fiction.” –  Penelope Lively

 

Born in Egypt on this date in 1933, the gregarious Lively has been an active, award-winning writer for nearly 60 years.  Author of both adult and children’s literature, she earned a Booker Prize for her adult novel Moon Tiger, and the Carnegie Medal for British Children's Boks for The Ghost of Thomas Kempe.   

 

Honored as a Fellow of the British Royal Society of Literature, Lively has written in several genres, doing novels, short stories – her most recent collection titled Metamorphosis – and radio and television scripts, reviews, and articles for newspapers and journals.  She’s also penned two memoirs:  Dancing Fish and Ammonites and Life in the Garden. 

 

While she didn’t start writing until her late 30s, she has been extremely prolific since, generating dozens of books in her main genres.  “Every novel generates its own climate,” she said.  “You just have to get going with it.”

 

And she advocates for being a good reader.  “All I know for certain is that reading is of the most intense importance to me,” she said. “If I were not able to read, to revisit old favorites and experiment with names new to me, I would be starved - probably too starved to go on writing myself.”

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.”