Best Advice
Unbridled Books asked its authors: “What’s the best piece of writing advice you have ever given or received?” The best advice I ever received about writing bridged the great divide between talk and...
View ArticleJulia Alvarez and the Role of Story
In a recent essay in Parabola (37;4 Winter 2012-13) titled “The Older Writer in the Underworld,” Julia Alvarez reflects on the importance of story not to the listener but to the story-teller, and how,...
View ArticleWriter’s Block: Perfectionism
Ironically, the best student in class is all too often the one who suffers from writer’s block. She is often the student who arrives prepared and on time, who takes notes and asks insightful...
View ArticleWriter’s Block: Habit
Students who suffer from writer’s block often describe writing as an abstraction or a mystical trance that occurs unwittingly and without explanation. Understandably, it’s that sense of writing being...
View ArticleRepetition vs. Transcendence
I assigned Sherry B. Ortner’s essay, “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture,” as the first reading in one of my courses this semester. Ortner, an anthropologist, explains that she wants “to expose...
View ArticleRepeat or Tell a Different Story?
Reading Hilde Lindemann Nelson’s Damaged Identity, Narrative Repair has been a transformative experience. This philosopher has given me a way of thinking and talking about how it feels to mediate...
View ArticleAn Interview with Ed Falco
Ed Falco and I share an important bond: we’re both lucky enough to have our work published by Unbridled Books. When we met at the Virginia Festival of the Book in March 2013, he kindly agreed to...
View ArticleAn Interview with Virginia Pye
Virginia Pye and I also share an important bond: we’re both lucky enough to have our work published by Unbridled Books. When we met at the Virginia Festival of the Book in March 2013, she kindly agreed...
View ArticleAn Interview with Melissa Scholes-Young
Melissa Scholes-Young was born and raised in Hannibal, Missouri, Mark Twain’s beloved boyhood home, and she is an Assistant Professor of English at American University in Washington, D.C., where she...
View ArticleAn Interview with Kathryn Johnson (aka Mary Hart Perry)
Kathryn Johnson is a prolific writer. She often tells the story that she wrote her first novel just to prove that she could. That fact, once established, has never caused her either to stop or slow...
View ArticleAn Interview with Richard Peabody
I met Richard Peabody at a local literary conference about seven years ago. At some point in the conversation, he mentioned his Novel Workshop–how the idea came to him, how important it was to get...
View ArticleAn Interview with Peter Geye
It is always a pleasure and a privilege to meet fellow Unbridled authors, and Peter Geye is one of them. His first novel, Safe from the Sea, won high praise from Library Journal, which commended Geye...
View ArticleReflections: p.m. korkinsky
P. M. Korkinsky lives with a large dog of indeterminate heritage in a small apartment in DC. Both poet and dog spend many hours wandering the city in search of words. When not writing poetry, Korkinsky...
View ArticleAn Interview with Betsy Prioleau
Betsy Prioleau is the author of Circle of Eros (Duke University Press) and Seductress (Penguin/Viking). She has a Ph.D. from Duke University, was a tenured associate professor at Manhattan College, and...
View Article“On Your Mark, Get Set – Freelance!” by Sonya Patterson
Writing is similar to running a marathon. But as a freelancer, you may find yourself crouched at the starting-line, waiting for the pistol to fire—or more literally, a pitch to be accepted—so you can...
View ArticleAn Interview with Clarence Brown
If you read the jacket of Clarence Brown’s first novel, Needs, you’ll learn that he is a recovering heroin addict. “Born in Charlottesville, Virginia,” the description continues, “Brown moved to...
View ArticleAn Interview with Sharon Short
Sharon Short is the author of My One Square Inch of Alaska (Penguin Plume, 2013), a novel set in the 1950s that tells the tale of Donna and Will Lane, siblings who, along with Trusty, a Siberian...
View Article“Be an Autodidact” by Fatima Brown
I just finished a course in Latino/a Feminisms that included the topics of history, identity, and feminism. The class was writing intensive, allowing students the possibility to explore their personal...
View ArticleAn Interview with Doritt Carroll
If you ask her, Doritt Carroll will tell you that she is (unfortunately) a lawyer and (fortunately) the mother of two daughters. She received her undergraduate and law degrees from Georgetown...
View Article“Wearing Three Hats” by Clarinda Harriss
Wearing three hats is uncomfortable. Wearing more than three is unwieldy to the point of immobilizing you, which is probably just as well because you look ridiculous. The hats I totter under are...
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