Linda K. Sienkiewicz's Blog, page 37

What, Why, How: Laura Hulthen Thomas

What:

I’m a fiction writer and I’ve also written essays. And, like all writers, I do so many other things that, while writing is absolutely central to who I feel I am, it’s only a small part of who my friends, family, and students see. I’m very, very lucky to teach creative writing at the University of Michigan’s Residential College, so most of what I do is read and talk to undergraduates about their fiction, essays, and poems. Our program teaches students in unique one-on-one tutorial sessi...

What, Why, How: Ellen Meeropol

What:

I write fiction; I love spinning tales. Each of my three novels began with a small spark that grew into a book. In the case of House Arrest, it was a one-paragraph article in the Boston Globe that intrigued me. It described the Court assigning a home care nurse to make prenatal visits to a pregnant young cult member under house arrest. At the time, I was a nurse practitioner working with children and families from around the world, all with different beliefs about health and illness. So...

Hungarian Cursing and Humor

Hungarian cursing:

My friend Olga taught me about Hungarian cursing when I was writing In the Context of Love. As the Hungarian heartthrob Joe tells young Angelica (referring to his immigrant father), “Hungarians curse better than anyone else. No one bothers sending anyone to hell. That’s too gentle. They say, ‘May God’s horse put his dick up your ass.’ They start out with stinky and whoring and end up with disgusting body parts.”

Hungarian sayings:

That Hungarians have a unique way of using...

What, Why, How: Louise Farmer Smith

What?

“What is it you want out of all of this?”

This was my husband’s plaintive and exasperated question regarding my continuing to write fiction. He was in pain. A short story of mine or a book or a query to an agent had again met with rejection. I can’t remember which because I was not in as much pain as he was. In his career he has not met with steady or even intermittent rejection, whereas I bring it on myself in waves. At one time I tried to keep five different short stories in the US m...

What Not to Ask an Author

[image error]How many?

How many books have you sold? It’s a surprisingly common question of authors. Sometimes it’s from people who most likely don’t know what the numbers even mean. Exactly how many book sales equal “success”? 1,000? 10,000? 100,000 or more?

Do they want to know if being an author has made me rich? Do they also want to know if I got a really huge advance? How huge is huge, anyway? Or do they really want some way to gauge how successful I am as an author?

How to measure success

Success is...

First Rehearsal for Listen To Your Mother

I was so excited – I hadn’t seen the Listen To Your Mother producers Angela Smith Youngblood and Angela Amman since my audition several months ago. The Angelas, as they like to call themselves, filled us in on the production while, one by one, a photographer ushered cast members outside to have our portraits taken. Meanwhile, we casually chatted as we passed cookies and veggies around the table in the Whole Foods community room in Detroit.

In no way did this prepare me for what was about to...

A Kinship of Clover by Ellen Meeropol

Civil disobedience:

How far does civil disobedience need to go before it makes a difference in the world, and at what personal cost?

Ellen Meeropol’s latest novel, A Kinship of Clover, revolves mostly around Jeremy, a 19 year old botany major. The story intertwines family, several generations, and the community at large, highlighting our tenuous interdependence. Global warming and its environmental consequences play a big part in this story, but Meeropol doesn’t preach or bury us in politics...

My Homage to a Feminist on her 75th Birthday

A Word Virtuoso:

Excitement practically made my fingers tremble as I leafed through Erica Jong‘s first poetry book, Fruits and Vegetables, in the public library in the early 80s. As I remember, the poetry section was pretty slim back then. What a discovery her book turned out to be for me. I was blown away. As a young poet (by young, I mean career-wise, as I was in my late thirties and married with children), I thought her metaphors were startling, and loved how she twisted them into somethin...

Unlikable Female Characters to Love

Women who refuse to play nice

Jamie Canaves, author of the list 100 Must-Read Books with Unlikable Women, writes that she loves unlikable female characters in novels:

“They refuse to be boxed into the idea of what girls, women, mothers, sisters, and girlfriends should be. They refuse to smile through their problems, to not be a burden, to make the right decisions, to play nice. They are human. They are hot messes. They have mental illnesses, are addicts, are aggressive, violent, complicated,...

Every Least Sparrow: Special Needs Parenting

A Parent’s Expectations

Looking back, Carolyn Walker writes that it was good that she and her husband didn’t know what to expect when their daughter Jennifer was diagnosed with Rubinstein-Taybi syndrome shortly after her first birthday. They believed she would be “delayed,” and they nurtured her as such. Soon, it became apparent that she would be far from “normal.”

In Every Least Sparrow, Walker ushers us into the baffling, confusing, and yet rewarding world of parenting such a child. How
ir...