Since 2007, along with my mentor, author Dani Shapiro, and her husband, the screenwriter Michael Maren, I’ve been organizing a writer’s conference called Sirenland. A beautiful name, but even more beautiful is the spot where it takes place: Le Sirenuse Hotel in Positano, Italy. Our 2010 conference has just ended. Our Sirenlanders have flown back to their […]
Last week I visited South Carolina for the very first time. I learned their state motto: Dum Spiro Spero (While I breathe, I hope) and their state dance: The Shag. I also gave a reading at Coastal Carolina University and took part in “The Moveable Feast,” a very cool reading series organized by Litchfield Books. […]
Author Dani Shapiro (who has been a huge mentor for me, and probably one of the best teachers I’ve ever studied with) has a fantastic essay in today’s LA Times, talking about how to edure as a writer today. She starts off by quoting legendary editor & founder of New American Review, Ted Solotaroff: “Solotaroff […]
People often ask me what I do for research. Well, here’s one example. I have never shot a gun in my life, except for a BB gun at camp when I was a little girl. The idea of them frightens me to death, actually. But I recently started work on a new novel whose main […]
For the past three years, I’ve been taking part in the Sirenland Writers Conference. This extraordinary conference began about four years ago, when author Dani Shapiro and her husband the screenwriter Michael Maren met Antonio and Carla Sersale, owners of Le Sirenuse Hotel in Positano, Italy. Antonio wanted to host a writers’ conference at his hotel, […]
A few months ago, I spoke with the Osceola County Library Book Club from Florida. One of the questions they asked me was about the inspiration behind the mousetrap factory that appears in The Good Thief. This picture explains it all. It’s from a children’s book called Pinchpenny Mouse (now sadly out of print), written […]
When I tell people that it took me nearly six years to write The Good Thief, they usually ask: How did you keep going? Well, one of the answers is in this picture–my writing group: Helen Ellis and Ann Napolitano. The three of us met at NYU’s Graduate Creative Writing program, began sharing our work, and have now been meeting […]