INTERVIEWING IS A HIGH ART. Whether a series of questions conducted for a primetime television show, the probing of characters by a fiction writer or the one-chance question shouted at a public figure, the results can make or break the final product.

Hardly a day passes but some young man or woman climbs the stairs to the office of The Bostonian to ask me that question. Always I tell them that the only way I know for a beginner to earn a living by writing is for him to get a job on a newspaper. S

AT FIRST GLANCE, URSULA K. LE GUIN’S fiction — filled with wizardry, mystical lands and societies thousands of years in the future — appears to flaunt the old standard, “Write what you know.” But in the October 1991 issue of The Writer, Le Guin expla

I HAVE A CONFESSION TO MAKE: I am sorely tempted, much more often than I feel comfortable admitting, to “unfollow” an ungodly number of people on Twitter. Friends. Family members. Idolized authors whose tweets, for various reasons, send them floor-wa

“A word after a word after a word is power,” says novelist Margaret Atwood. Part of that power is the power writing bestows upon its author – the power not only to reflect our emotions but to impact them. But we usually want more from our writing tha

Many writers want to hone their craft but don’t want to commit to or pay for a full-blown MFA program. Luckily, many local and online classes, workshops, and certificate programs can support writers’ needs without obliging them to commit several year

Susanna Moore belongs to a small class of writers whose work performs the paradoxical miracle of giving solace by offering none. For all their sensuous engagement with the Hawaiian landscape of her childhood (which led to the myopic critical judgment

I IMAGINE BOTH YOU AND I ARE CURIous to see how artificial intelligence is going to “disrupt” (to use the Silicon Valley vernacular) the writing world in the next few years. This question sizzled for me during a community development meeting in my to

I’M A LATE BLOOMER. I’VE BEEN writing for kids for about 30 years, and I sold my first picture book in 2010. In college, my favorite class was Introduction to Children’s Literature, better known as Kiddie Lit, an elective in my elementary education c

TODAY WE REMEMBER EDGAR ALLAN Poe as one of the earliest authors (some would say the creator) of both detective stories and horror stories, and as the writer of some of the most haunting poems in the language. We may be less familiar with his nonfict

As a freelancer, my time is limited. With two little kids and a part-time schedule, I have to make the most of every minute I’m at my desk. Over the last five years, since my son was born, I’ve become more efficient than ever about making the most of

THE LIGHTS FROM THE AMBULANCE filled Mr. Felter’s room — red, blue, white, over-and-over — bathing his poster for Woodstock, the photo of him with Stevie Ray Vaughan and the first six-string guitar he ever owned. He heard the rattle of a metal cart i

THE WRITER MAGAZINE WAS LAUNCHED in April 1887 by two Boston Globe reporters, William H. Hills and Robert Luce. Their intent was to produce a publication meant to “interest and help all literary workers.” It was 18 pages long and devoid of illustrati

Question: In your essay, you share the story of your friend saying, “Xueyan, I need to tell you something that you must understand: your buck teeth don’t make your smile sorry. On the contrary, they make your smile sunny. I think your smile is really

EVERY YEAR ABOUT THIS TIME, I TEND to be afflicted with two competing novel ideas dueling to be chosen for National Novel Writing Month, and I feel like I’m in a dilemma on the scale of Sophie’s Choice: Which novel idea (or child) do I choose? I can

I WAS DESPONDENT ABOUT MY BUCK teeth, but now I am proud of them. Growing up, I gradually came to realize that my front teeth were different than the front teeth of others around me. Whenever I looked into the mirror and smiled, a pair of outstanding

IN 2022, DANIEL WALMAN ORGANIZED a retreat for writers at the historical Château of Coislin, about an hour’s drive from the French town of Nantes. Walman invited Jennifer Niven, a renowned YA novelist, to be the featured lecturer for his 2022 retreat

Xueyan is the author of a new collection of poetry, Time Peels All to Original White: Xueyan Poems. Xueyan (雪雁), also known as “Snow Goose”, is a poet born on a Chinese festival called Liqiu (立秋) — which translates to “The Beginning of Autumn.” She e

Back in October of 2020, I read a blog post by a writer who lamented being distracted by his own negative self-talk: Everything I want to write has already been written. I have nothing original to add. My prose is limp. Etcetera. I read the post to m

IF ANYONE WERE WATCHING, THEY would have seen her lick a tree. Sienna’s pink tongue, almost iridescent, would have been the only glimpse of color in the storm. It would have looked like an extra-terrestrial reaching out to meet a droplet of rain, hea

Writing conferences, retreats, and festivals are some of the best places to hone your craft and learn from some of the top names in the field, but they also offer the unique opportunity to meet fellow writers. In what can often be a solitary career,

AT FIVE IN THE MORNING I MADE A cake. The tester came out clean. Actually there was a glint of moisture at the tip of the stick, but the rim of the cake had almost caught and I didn’t feel like tenting it with foil. The folding and fussing, the crunc