Last week, I posted a reading I made of my poems for Writing It Real members. The link to the YouTube video is below. This week I added the YouTube video of a reading I gave outdoors in Port Townsend … Continue reading →
Author Susan Luzader has had an inspiring book publishing journey, and this month our Writing It Real article explores it with her. Visit her website Wine and Cereal: An Irreverent Look at Sixty-ish and Single to sign up for her … Continue reading →
This week we are hearing from author and Writing It Real member Morgan Baker. You can listen to her reading an excerpt of her memoir Emptying the Nest: How to Get Better at Saying Goodbyes during an interview with Hippocampus … Continue reading →
This month’s publishing article and book excerpt comes from Writing It Real member Rhonda Wiley-Jones. Kirkus Reviews summarizes her book Song of Herself, Atmosphere Press, September 22, this way: Wiley-Jones packs her narrative with a plethora of captivating themes and … Continue reading →
Dorothy Ross’s memoir, NOT Just a Secretary, holds all the alertness and wry humor she evidenced during her years at work and in retirement. She shares a spirited description of getting her book written and then out there followed by … Continue reading →
Writing While Masked: Reflections on 2020 and Beyond By Mary Ann Gonzales, Tyson Greer, Wanda Herndon, Laura Celise Lippman, Jane Spalding, Suzanne Tedesko, and Beth Weir, Published by Washington State University Imprint Basalt Books, 2022 Description from the publisher’s website: … Continue reading →
The how, when, where, and why of the process – (the who is my “collected” writing selves) Early in 2021, a full year into the pandemic, I signed up to listen to Canadian writer and self-described writing “mid-wife,” Traci Skuce … Continue reading →
I am excited to introduce you again to author and poet Alison Townsend. I have been reading her beautiful lyric prose and poetry for years. I admire her sense of place and nature in what she writes. With the publication … Continue reading →
It was the year I moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, leaving the boarding school where I’d been teaching in western Massachusetts. I was living in an apartment – actually, the 2nd floor of an old home that had been carved into … Continue reading →
And we wind up National Poetry Month with two more short essays on impactful poems chosen by Writing It Real members. It has been a month of learning about poems new to us and poems to revisit. Thank you to … Continue reading →
Whether we want to explain ourselves to readers and editors and thereby to ourselves or use what we lament about our publishing process to help others along the path in publishing, writing about it helps us as writers and builds … Continue reading →
“Memoir that bears witness to history, I’ve come to realize, is never a simple matter of finishing,” author Mimi Schwartz writes at the end of the preface to her new memoir, Good Neighbors, Bad Times Revisited, about her Jewish father’s … Continue reading →
I was very fortunate to receive my copy of Tarn Wilson’s new book, In Praise of Inadequate Gifts, a Memoir in Essays the day before I left for 11 days of wandering beaches along the Oregon Coast. On the road … Continue reading →
In March, my husband and I ran into Joanne while we were out walking and she was returning home from a walk. Over the CDC prescribed distance, we remembered the radio interview she had done with me for KPTZ, and … Continue reading →
Writing It Real member Mara Lathrop created a project during the pandemic that offers us a chance to experience her play Is Story of Poor Sea Village Girl directed by Cynthia Stokes and performed by SAG actors, Mark Lewis and … Continue reading →
In 2018 and 19, I worked with Writing It Real member Marilea C. Rabasa consulting on a second memoir she was compelled to write and wanted very much to get right. She wasn’t happy with the way it was unwinding … Continue reading →
Here it is in PDF format: Holiday Times: The Ones We Like Remembering, Others We’d Rather Forget, our third Writing It Real anthology for free download. It features writing by 17 Writing It Real members and altogether has 18 pieces … Continue reading →
I am pleased to share an essay by Writing It Real member Helen Donnelly Goehring from her recently published collection, Transformed by Grief: A Personal History. Helen’s essay “Taking Notes: Assisted Living” was a winner in Writing It Real’s 2012 … Continue reading →
Last week, we posted Chapter 40 of Jennifer Jamieson Woods’ autobiographical novel No Guarantees. This week’s post is an interview with the author about writing the novel she needed to write. Sheila Jennifer, thank you for sharing the story of … Continue reading →
Chapter 40 of No Guarantees Josie went to work as usual on Monday morning. Although she was a person who found comfort in the predictable rhythm of life, today she felt irritated and bored with her life. She felt stuck … Continue reading →
Maya Angela Smith is an associate professor of Francophone studies at the University of Washington, Seattle with a PhD in Romance Languages and Linguistics from UC Berkeley. Her scholarship broadly focuses on the intersection of race, language, and mobility among marginalized groups in the … Continue reading →
The Writing It Real March 2020 article is a compilation of writings by Writing It Real members on a topic dear to our hearts–how and why we write. EBook Formats We have 3 different formats. Which ones you choose depends … Continue reading →
Our contest judge Holly Hughes wrote these words in choosing Laurie McConnachie’s essay as one of our three winners: This is a deeply moving account of a daughter who lost her mother to a brain tumor when she was in … Continue reading →
I am pleased to share another essay by a Writing It Real member. “Beginning Again with Tree Spirits” illustrates the diverse topics our members write about. Reading Katlaina’s essay will definitely change your relationship to the trees and forests in … Continue reading →
Writing It Real contributor Carol Smallwood is a poet with several volumes to her name, a retired career librarian who has produced books of value to those who direct and run libraries and educational programs, and she is the editor … Continue reading →
I haven’t posted in the Writing It Real category of “Writing Makes a Difference” in a while now as I’ve concentrated on writing exercises to keep you inspired. This week, though, I am returning to that category to share Susan … Continue reading →
This past weekend, I was in conversation with fiction writer and memoirist Nahid Rachlin about her books and writing career. for my radio show on KPTZ ?In Conversation: Discussions on Writing and the Writing Life.? It had been over a … Continue reading →
Our fall/winter 2018 contest judge Kelli Agodon felt that two poems tied for 2nd place. We posted one last week, ?Grave Site Visit? by Nancy Levinson, and this week we are posting the second second-place winning poem, Barbara Simmons “Driving … Continue reading →
One of two writings tied for second place in our fall/winter 2018 writing contest is “Gravesite Visit,” a poem by Writing It Real member Nancy Levinson. Our guest judge Kelli Agondon described her choice this way: “Gravesite Visit” is a … Continue reading →
Who among us wouldn?t envy the stamp of approval Vicki Horton?s personal essay ?Fishing with My Father? received from Writer?s Digest magazine in 2016? In answer to some of my questions about this writing and her writing life, Vicki responded: … Continue reading →
This is a revised and updated article based on one from 2002 when I first read “Learning to Drive: A Year of Unexpected Lessons” by Katha Pollitt, published in The New Yorker magazine. I hope you’ll read the essay and go on to … Continue reading →
There are times in a person’s life when everything is tinted gray and the future looks too dark to step into. Then in one single shift of the universe, something happens—we turn left, instead of right; we answer the phone, … Continue reading →
This week, I have made a video for Writing It Real’s Weekly Article. In it, I share a passage from Canadian author Miriam Toews’ novel All My Puny Sorrows in which a talented 15-year-old piano player exercises her genius against … Continue reading →
[Editor’s note: Sometimes I teach a class for Women on Writing that I call “Writing is a Friend with Extraordinary Benefits.” The following essay by Katherine Clarke is reprinted with permission of the author, is an example of what happens … Continue reading →
Joan Leof’s collection of essays Matryoshka: Uncovering Your Many Selves Through Writing Personal Essays and Questions for Reflection is intended to share her personal experience essays in a way that encourages others to write from their experiences. After reading her … Continue reading →
Deborah Berger asked women to write letters about what they never told their mothers. Ultimately, she edited a selection of the contributions, along with profiles of their authors, into Dear Mom, Women’s Letters of Love, Loss and Longing. In her … Continue reading →
Writing It Real member Arla Shephard Bull worked back and forth with me on developing an essay that was important to her to write. She had decided to use the third person as a way of distancing herself enough to … Continue reading →
The opening of Meg Files’ fine novel The Third Law of Motion?introduces the?book’s first-person narrative as we enter protagonist Dulcie White’s life as a college-bound high school student. In alternating chapters throughout the book, the young woman’s sometimes boyfriend, a … Continue reading →
This week, Judy Reeves, author of the new book, Wild Women, Wild Voices, shares her thoughts on writing practice. Here article serves as a good review for all of us who are busy concentrating on revising and publishing and may … Continue reading →
Jody Gentian Bower’s new book, Jane Eyre’s Sisters: How Women Live and Write the Heroine’s Story, is sure to change some minds about the path of women’s literature. I am pleased to post the following interview with Jody. I know … Continue reading →
We are pleased to post the second place winning essay in this past winter’s Writing It Real essay contest. Our guidelines said the number 12 was to be somewhere in the essay in honor of Writing It Real’s 12th Anniversary. … Continue reading →
Not long ago, Writing It Real member Dorothy Ross wrote to me about her newest project — recording the narratives she’s written about her life for her family to have in the form of audio files. I listened to a … Continue reading →
The following essay by Susan Bono is the title essay from her new collection What Have We Here: Essays about Keeping House and Finding Home. We reprint it this week with her permission. To learn more about Susan’s writing and the place of … Continue reading →
For writer and small press publisher (Tiny Lights) Susan Bono, the last thirty years have mostly been about trying to stay ahead of a husband, growing kids, aging parents, and an eccentric old house, in spite of detours, deadlines, unexpected changes, … Continue reading →
The following is the 2013 foreword I was honored to write for the anthology Times They Were A’Changing: Women Remember the 60s and 70s, edited by Linda Joy Myers, Amber Lea Starfire and Kate Farrell. Paying tribute to the vibrant decades during … Continue reading →
I was reading a magazine article recently in which authors wrote about pivotal books they’ve read. What book would I name, I wondered. Immediately, I saw myself at my fourth grade desk in the 1950’s at Franklin Elementary School in … Continue reading →
I am a person who saves things, from the obviously important letter my father wrote me right before he passed away to the “might need it someday” notes from middle school. I have shoeboxes of unorganized photographs, rocks and shells … Continue reading →
Bonnie Rough’s memoir, Carrier, which won the 2011 Minnesota Book Award, includes extensive research via family stories, interviews, pictures, legal records, letters, and more, but it is her compassionate portrayal of her grandfather, Earl, who passed away soon after her … Continue reading →
I am pleased to publish this interview with award winning memoirist Sue William Silverman about the writing of her newest memoir and her advice to those of us who write from personal experience. The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life … Continue reading →
Our fall/winter writing contest judge, Molly Tinsley, chose “Why I Write,” a personal essay by Mary Kurtz, as our first-place winner. Molly said in her notes about this essay: “Emotional control of the narrative makes Mary’s experience all the more … Continue reading →
When you read the following excerpts from Rhonda Wiley-Jones’ memoir, At Home in the World: Travel Stories of Growing Up and Growing Away, you’ll likely remember incidents from your own youth when you learned important things about yourself, perceptions that … Continue reading →
Are you thinking of self-publishing and wondering what the process is like? It never hurts to hear from one who has successfully navigated the process. With humor and self-awareness, Rhonda Wiley-Jones takes us on her journey as writer turned self-publisher. … Continue reading →
For our community read this past March 2013, the librarians in Port Townsend, where I live, chose Pam Houston’s novel Contents May Have Shifted, a story, they felt to be about love and freedom in middle age, something dear to … Continue reading →
Former romance writer Thelma Zirkelback has two books out now (and a blog) on the subject of widowhood, one an anthology she co-edited of writings by women who have coped with their new life situation (On Our Own: Widowhood for … Continue reading →
This excerpt is from Chapter 15 of The Third Law of Motion by Meg Files, published by Anaphora Literary Press, 2011, reprinted here by permission of the author. Lonnie had already started work as an inventory clerk in a new discount … Continue reading →
I was fortunate to meet Barbara Field when we both presented several years ago at the Whidbey Island Writers’ Conference in Washington State. When I heard from Barbara about recent developments in her writing life, I was eager to share … Continue reading →