Jonathan Cullen, Author of "The Ranks of Jody Brae"
June 22, 2011

BackstoryAuthors tell you what inspired their workJonathan Cullen, Author of "The Ranks of Jody Brae" June 22, 2011 ![]() Article Topics:Tracy Marchini, Author of "Pub Speak" May 19, 2011
I would love to say that the idea for Pub Speak: A Writer's Dictionary of Publishing Terms came to me as I was browsing dictionaries in a library in Rome, or speaking about book publishing with my favorite author in a French café. But actually, the idea came to me while I sat on a hard plastic chair and flipped through a magazine in the waiting room of a car shop.
Continue reading...
Deborah Noyes, Author of "Captivity" April 27, 2011
As soon as I read about them, I was drawn to the real-life rags-to-riches story of the Fox sisters. Two ordinary farm girls from Western New York, Maggie and Kate Fox gripped their community by claiming to be able to communicate with the dead. They became celebrities in the bargain, sowing the seeds of an international religious movement that would eventually claim a million followers.
Continue reading...
Article Topics:Gayle Brandeis, Author of "Delta Girls" February 10, 2011
Delta Girls is a book born from rejection. When Ballantine Books bought my novel Self Storage, they offered me a two-book deal, which of course was thrilling and affirming to me as a writer. I wrote a novel with a 12-year-old narrator, My Life with the Lincolns, and turned it in, thinking I had fulfilled my contract and would have a new book in the world soon.
Continue reading...
Susan Henderson, Author of "Up From the Blue" January 26, 2011
When Tillie Harris goes into premature labor, she has no one to turn to but her estranged father. Their relationship has been strained since Tillie was eight years old and her mother mysteriously vanished. Up From the Blue follows young Tillie's startling discoveries about what happened to her mother, as well as grown Tillie's struggle with a relationship that’s stuck in the past.
Continue reading...
Article Topics:Laura van den Berg, Author of "What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us" August 26, 2010
The title story of my collection, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us, began with me falling in love with a word: Madagascar. I fell head-over-heels for the cadence, for the way it evoked a Jacques Cousteau-esque sense of adventure and mystery.
Continue reading...
Article Topics:John Cotter, Author of "Under the Small Lights" July 23, 2010 I used to play at being a writer. Afternoons in Boston, in my early 20s, I'd pour three fingers of Black Bush whiskey, feed a page into my typewriter, and surround my desk with books by whoever I was reading then — Bill Knott, Marguerite Duras — and add to that bibles and newspapers. I'd open to random pages and write down whatever caught my eye, whatever seemed anachronistic or poignant, then I'd make a hash out of it. Continue reading...Article Topics: |
![]() |