The Writer

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 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

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.

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 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

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

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

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