Thanks Leslie Hall Pinder for getting this thing going. I am working on a YA novel tentatively titled, TONGUE-TIED, about Preston MacFarland, an 18-year-old who finds birthday cards from a grandfather in England, a man he never knew. The cards, almost 50 years old, unopened, and addressed to Preston’s dad, who’s dead, spur Preston to [...]
Posted on: January 31st, 2013
by Ellen
The Writing and Reading Resolution A favorite expression—I’m only a writer when I’m writing—reminds me not to talk about writing more than I actually write, and not to take myself or my writing too seriously. Yet I wish to write with purpose and from the dark soil of my heart for there are too few [...]
Posted on: September 20th, 2012
by Ellen
Ten Questions about my Work-In-Progress! What is the working title of your book? Is It Me You’re Looking For? Where did the idea come from for the book? One spring afternoon in 2010 when we had an apartment in Krakow, Poland, my friend, Milena, a Lithuanian lawyer, was over for tea. We were laughing about [...]
Posted on: July 27th, 2012
by Ellen
Since January 2012, I’ve received invitations to book teas, held in private homes, where the featured guest is the recently published book. One of my friends with a gorgeous house offered to give one for my book, Falling Women and Other Stories, published by Shelfstealers. My book tea was held on a Saturday afternoon this July. [...]
Posted on: April 23rd, 2012
by Ellen
“My mother taught a language no one speaks” is a line from the first short story in my collection, Falling Women and Other Stories. The sentence came to me one day during a writing exercise I was doing with students at my university. And the sentence has remained, buried in the dark soil of my [...]
Posted on: April 16th, 2012
by Ellen
More than ten years ago, Sunil Freeman, Assistant Director of the Writer’s Center, called and asked if I would like to teach “Writing from Life.” “What is it?” I wanted to know. “Personal narrative, stories about one’s life,” he said. “True stories.” (Here I am recreating dialogue, an accepted technique in personal narrative writing.) As [...]
Posted on: February 26th, 2012
by Ellen
“How will I know you?” I ask my publisher, Sheryl Dunn, President of Shelfstealers. She’s meeting me at the airport in Leon, Mexico. I’ve worked with this woman for over a year, emailing almost daily, sharing my fiction and my life. I went through Sherylizing, her grueling process of editing that leaves a writer [...]
Posted on: February 6th, 2012
by Ellen
“The twinkling of an eye will take as long as I say, and will, if I wish, divide into tiny eternities, full of bullets stopped in mid-flight. Not a thing will happen unless I say so.” Wislawa Szymborska (July 2, 1923-February 1, 2012) This great poet, a Nobel Prize winner, died recently. The line above [...]
Posted on: January 19th, 2012
by Ellen
I love to read about World War II on the Channel Islands, the only English-speaking territory occupied by the Nazis. I got hooked on this setting in Tim Binder’s Sleeping With the Enemy. Proof I loved this book: I finished it in paperback and turned around and bought it in hardcover. Other books I’ve enjoyed [...]
Posted on: January 12th, 2012
by Ellen
I was looking for a Ukranian mate, a partner, someone who would stay with me, be my wife,” said American Cary Dolego to the Associated Press. “All the Slavic ladies in this part of the world are delightful.” Instead of finding a bride, Dolego got a few days of living homeless on the streets of [...]
