This article originally appeared in the 1999 issue of The Sampler, the newsletter of the Southern California Children’s Literature Council (formerly the Southern California Council on Literature for Children and Young People (SCCLCYP). When I was seven years old, I wrote a poem to console my father after the defeat of his favorite hockey team, … Continue reading
Recently I interviewed poet and essayist Rebecca McClanahan for a book on essay writing that I am finishing for Writer’s Digest Books. When I told her that I had reviewed her essay “Book Marks,” which I’d found in Best American Essays 2001 for Writing It Real subscribers, she offered to allow me to reprint the … Continue reading
This fall I corresponded with novelist and short fiction writer Janice Eidus to investigate how fiction writers use personal experience in their writing. I have admired Eidus’ fiction and her teaching for many years now and in 1997, I invited her to contribute to my book, The Writer’s Journal: 40 Writers and Their Journals, published … Continue reading
At a writing conference workshop on developing the personal essay, Suzan Huney read the draft of an essay spawned by thumbing through her address book. Her musings on the people she found in her book led to memories of her grandmother’s address book and then to consulting it directly. As she continued her drafting process, … Continue reading