Last week, author Mitali Perkins posted her Ten Tips on Writing Race in Novels, which resulted from a lively discussion on her blog about whether authors should describe race at all. It’s been really interesting to me to read her tips. Like most readers, I’ve encountered the food-related descriptors (coffee-colored skin) and groaned. I’ve also […]

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The Oct. 20th issue of The New Yorker contains an article by Malcolm Gladwell titled “Late Bloomers,” which examines the difference between youthful and late-blooming genius in artists. We all are familiar with the stereotype of the young genius (e.g., Picasso) who stuns the world with his vision while in his late teens or 20s, […]

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I come to every Robin McKinley book with a lot of expectations, because I have read and re-read her books more than any other books, period. I am a genuine, bona fide Robin McKinley fan, and therefore it’s sometimes difficult to read one of her new books because I’m constantly muttering under my breath, […]

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For the past month I have been working on yet another major rewrite of Ash (hopefully the last big one!), and I just finished a feverish week of writing till midnight (midnight!) and drinking Diet Coke and not seeing any real people (OK, I saw them, but I didn’t talk to them!), and today I […]

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Today AfterEllen.com published a retrospective on lesbian poetry highlighting ten lesbian/bisexual poets, beginning (of course) with Sappho. My favorite poet overall, lesbian, bisexual or straight, is Edna St. Vincent Millay. Millay was known for her many lovers, some of them female, but I first heard of her when my grandmother gave me a book […]

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I recently read an essay by David Gessner in the New York Times Magazine’s college issue titled “Those Who Write, Teach.” Gessner is a creative writing professor who has also written six books, and in the essay he describes the experience of forgoing (mostly) the intensity of full-time writing for the more moderate life of […]

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