I was so humbled and honored to receive LAF’s Champion for Justice Award at LAF’s annual luncheon at the Palmer House. So surprised, and thrilled that Michelle Obama sent a video (soon to be posted on LAF’s Facebook page) . This is the gist of my acceptance speech: Read More
It’s officially summer. Although it’s been almost 40 years since it mattered, every May and June feels like the end of the school year. Tired of studying. Tired of the “required” reading. Tired of talking about school subjects, about mock arguments, practice trials, law notes, senior papers. Looking forward to a summer job...Read More
Goodreads Book Giveaway Saluting the Sun by Mary Hutchings Reed Giveaway ends May 15, 2015. See the giveaway details at Goodreads. Enter to WinRead More
You think by now we’d be over it. How many times have we been told, it’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game? That we play for the love of the game, that even reputedly “very talented” teams can hit a losing streak?Read More
Delay. Delay. Delay. Some say it’s the essence of dramatic writing. Unlike expository writing, where the first sentence of each paragraph pretty much sums up the point to be made, each sentence in dramatic writing leads the reader to the next sentence so that the reader is forced to read on —...Read More
At the Chicago Writers Conference last weekend, author and teacher Eric Charles May gave a talk about causality in fiction. He said that we all tolerate accidents in real life, and while we may ask “Why?” or “Why me?” at various crises in our lives, we inevitably must accept that at times there are no...Read More
A good writing conference energizes and inspires as well as providing new information, or at least old information in a fresh way. Chicago Writers Conference, which wrapped up today, was a great writing conference. Speakers were candid, generous and actually concerned, it seemed, with sharing information rather than gratifying their own egos. While shattering dreams...Read More
In my last column (“A ‘know-it-all’ approach to writing,” June 27), I wrote about Colm Toibin’s advice that a writer should know the whole story before writing his or her novel. Since I’ve always discovered the story by writing it, this for me would be a new way of working — but one I’m willing...Read More
June 27, 2014 For two years now, we’ve been writing about crafting your first novel and I have insisted that you don’t need to know your whole story in order to begin. This has worked for me through the process of writing a dozen novels, but recently I heard Colm Tóibín (Brooklyn, The Testament of...Read More
