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.”

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.”