Browsing tag: writers

the orange prize. and other things i keep up with.


Last week the winner of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction was announced – British author Rose Tremain’s novel The Road Home. Other shortlisted nominees: Nancy Huston, Fault Lines; Sadie Jones, The Outcast; Charlotte Mendelson, When We Were Bad; Heather O’Neill, Lullibies for Little Criminals; and Patricia Wood, Lottery. The Bridgeport Prize International Creative Writing

the innocents abroad


It was ’round about this time, in 1867, that Mark Twain set out on his grand tour of Europe and the Middle East. The letters he wrote, to be published in papers back home, became the basis for a book. Hemingway, whom I’m slowly falling in love with again, once said that all modern American

why i write. orwell.


In 1946 George Orwell outlined his four great motives for writing in the essay “Why I Write”. He believed these motives exist, in different degrees, in every writer. I’d be lying if I said he wasn’t right. For me, it’s mostly about Aesthetic Enthusiasm. It’s also about a kind of peace that comes over me

writing down the bones


Open up your mind to the possibility that 1+1 can equal 48, a Mercedes-Benz, an apple pie, a blue horse. Don’t tell your autobiography with facts, such as “I am in sixth grade. I am a boy. I live in Owatonna. I have a mother and father.” Tell me who you really are: “I am

writers write


“There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly: sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.” – Ernest Hemingway

shock proof


“The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof b.s. detector. This is the writer’s radar and all good writers have it.” –Ernest Hemingway

the facts of life


“I can’t stress enough how different it is to write about the real and the unreal. When I started writing my memoir my whole metabolism changed. I’d just turned 50 and I assumed it was just age, but I didn’t want to get out of bed in the morning and I had the most delicious