Pitchapalooza coming to Words Maplewood

As an addendum to my last post, I just heard from Words Bookstore in Maplewood that Pitchapalooza is coming on October 27. You can get all the details at Pitchapalooza’s site, but here’s a brief intro to what they do. I hear from friends that their events are well worth a visit. “Five years ago, [...]

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Picking Borders’ Bones

OK, let’s admit it. We’ve all done it at some point over the past few weeks – headed over to the nearest Borders to pick the last meat off the bones, grabbing whatever we could to add to our personal libraries before the doors finally closed for good next Friday. Not that most of us [...]

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The Times They Are a-Changin’

The Times They Are a-Changin’. I see it again and again. I’m no longer worried so much as bemused (or amused) at the wriggling that the entire book industry is doing right now, trying to find a comfortable fit in so many new and unfamiliar positions. I am wriggling, too, growing The Writers Circle even [...]

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Congratulations to Another Writer in Our Circle, Marilyn Martin

Congratulations to Marilyn Martin whose essay, Driving To Waldorf was just published in Front Porch, the online literary journal of Texas State University’s MFA program. Marilyn joined our Thursday evening group for several sessions a couple of years ago. (Anyone remember the frogs?) She is also the author of a book about raising a child [...]

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Piecing It Together

What does it mean to be a writer today? For most of us, we are piecing it together, taking the hours when they come, squeezing our words into lunch breaks, between classes or meetings. We fantasize of having endless hours to dally with our muse. In truth, even writers who have found their way to [...]

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Crazy Sexy Sandra

Congratulations to another of The Writers Circle’s authors, Sandra Joseph, who has posted a charming, moving and typically candid guest post on Crazy Sexy Life: The Tumor on My Last Nerve. As I read her guest post, I particularly paused at the self-admonishment she shared: “I can almost literally hear my acting teacher clap his [...]

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Making Space to Write

As I prepare to attempt The Writers Circle Journal online, I invite all of you, even those I don’t know, to submit 500 words or less on your perfect writing space – real or imagined. Please submit your work to “info AT writerscircleworkshops.com” by pasting your entire manuscript and a brief bio into the body [...]

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Guest Blogger Lena Roy: We are writers, hear us roar!

The web of support that frames my life as a writer was first anchored in a writing workshop taught by Madeleine L’Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time. Sitting at the feet of the author of one of the most influential books of my childhood, I gained not only a richer understanding of literary craft, [...]

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More Adventures in the Woods

On a far more local note, my latest in a series of articles on the reforestation efforts in the South Mountain Reservation just posted on Maplewood Patch. Check out: A Tree Grows in the Reservation—Or Does It?

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Guest Blogger: Marina Budhos, author of Tell Us We’re Home

In a revealing email exchange between authors David Gates and Jonathan Lethem posted on the PEN American Center’s website, Lethem bemoans the author’s predicament in the digital age “where the novelists are supposed to shut up and blunder through the dark woods like Salingerian elephants with day-glo targets painted on their backs, entitled only to [...]

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