Writers Write -- Writer's Blog and Writing and Publishing Resource

WritersWrite.com

Search

Amazon.com's new Kindle Fire gives you access to movies, apps, games, music, reading and more, plus Amazon's revolutionary, cloud-accelerated web browser. With a fast, powerful dual-core processor, the Kindle Fire is the latest in e-reader technology. Enjoy 18 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, and books; thousands of popular apps and games; ultra-fast web browsing with Amazon Silk, free cloud storage for all your Amazon content, and a vibrant color touchscreen with extra-wide viewing angle.
Click Here to learn more.

Writer's Blog | Search this Site | Subscribe

**Self-publishing Section
Don't miss our Self-publishing resource. With articles, features and links, this section will help you find out the information you need to self-publish. We've also got an entire section on book promotion to help you get the word out about your new book.

Publish Your Book!
Book Publishing made easy with Instantpublisher.com. Now you can self publish your work quickly, affordably and professionally with Instantpublisher.com. Instantpublisher.com offers: low prices with no setup fees or hidden charges, color printing, 7 binding styles and great customer service. Visit Instantpublisher.com today for instant price quotes and other options.

International Scholars Gather in Scotland to Discuss Harry Potter

St. Andrews University in Scotland hosted "A Brand of Fictional Magic: Reading Harry Potter as Literature," the first international conference on Harry Potter. The two day event drew 60 international scholars. Many were presenting doctoral papers on the literary relevance of J.K. Rowling's series.

Academics delivered lectures on everything from the use of the Socratic method by Dumbledore to educate Harry, racial politics of goblins, the use of paganism in the books, an examination of the importance of food as it denotes British identity, and how the series is an allegory for World War II.

Several scholars picked up on the World War II themes. Bielefeld University's Melanie Babenhauserheide is writing a doctoral thesis called "Ideology and Education in Rowling's Harry Potter Novels." She says the children's victory over evil in the final book is a clear allusion to the triumph over Nazism. Voldemort is Hitler, because "he hates all deviants."

The conference was organized by two St. Andrews professors: John Patrick Pazdziora of the School of English and Father Micah Snell from the Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts. Professor Pazdziora had this to say about the need for such a conference: "Harry Potter is the main narrative experience of an entire generation. We can't avoid the fact that Harry Potter is the main narrative experience of an entire generation - the children who literally grew up with Harry Potter. The Harry Potter novels are simply the most important and influential children's books of the late-20th and early 21st Centuries."

The professor takes great umbrage at those who say the books have little literary merit: "I take exception to the unexamined and misinformed assumption that the books are 'light on literary merit'. Ms Rowling's works are comic, certainly, but it's a great mistake to think they're simple or haphazard story-telling. The seven books are each and taken together a remarkably intricate ring composition for one thing, with every chapter having a parallel analogy with another in the same book."

He added, "We can't avoid the fact that Harry Potter is the main narrative experience of an entire generation, the children who quite literally grew up with Harry Potter. The Harry Potter novels are simply the most important and influential children's books of the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries."

Posted on May 19, 2012

Your Ad Could Be Here!
Get your message out with a text advertorial. Text Advertorials consist of 50 words of text, a graphic and link to your website. Click here to request our rate card!

Children's Author and Naturalist Jean Craighead George Dead at 92

Julie of the Wolves cover

Sad news: The New York Times reports that Newberry Medal-winning children's author and naturalist Jean Craighead George has died at the age of 92 after suffering a stroke.

A prolific writer who loved animals, George wrote more than 100 fiction and nonfiction books including Julie of the Wolves, The Buffalo Are Back and My Side of the Mountain. Her books inspired many children to learn more about wildlife and the natural world.

Jane Friedman, the former CEO of HarperCollins, told School Library Journal that the hallmark of her character was her strong opinions. Friedman said, "She knew her own mind, and [that] was the best thing you could say about anyone. She was her own woman."

George was always independent. After receiving her degree from Pennsylvania State University, she joined the White House Press Corps: she was one of the first women journalists to do so. At the age of 90, she was asked in an interview about her legacy. She replied, "Remember me as somebody who talked about nature, who awakened them to a new world, and helped them restore it."

Photo: HarperCollins

Posted on May 18, 2012

How To Make It As A Songwriter
Mary Dawson's book, How to Get Somewhere in the Music Business from Nowhere with Nothing, gives you the inside scoop on how to make it in the music business as a songwriter. Mary teaches you all you need to know to make your songwriting dreams a reality. Click here to learn more.

As Avengers Passes $1 Billion in Box Office Revenue, Joss Whedon Thanks His Fans

Joss Whedon and Samuel Jackson on The Avengers

The Avengers has now broken all kinds of box office records, zooming past one billion dollars in ticket sales. Writer/director Joss Whedon has been catapulted straight into screenwriting and directing superstardom. Joss thanked his longtime fans for their support in a heartfelt and very funny post on Whedonesque.

Joss wrote the post last week, just after the amazing opening numbers were posted and the glowing reviews were in. He talked about how his life will be different after The Avengers, and shares his thoughts on his next movie project:

People have told me that this matters, that my life is about to change. I am sure that is true. And change is good -- change is exciting. I think -- not to jinx it -- that I may finally be recognized at Comiccon. Imagine! Also, with my percentage of "the Avengers" gross, I can afford to buy... [gets call from agent. Weeps manfully. Resumes typing.] ...a fine meal. But REALLY fine, with truffles and s#!+. And I can get a studio to finance my dream project, the reboot of "Air Bud" that we all feel is so long overdue. (He could play Jai Alai! Think of the emotional ramifications of JAI ALAI!!!!)

He then talks about what his fans have meant to him, especially the long-time fans who have been with him in the Whedonverse since Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and stuck around to enjoy Angel, Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog, Firefly, Serenity, Dollhouse and Cabin in the Woods:

What doesn't change is anything that matters. What doesn't change is that I've had the smartest, most loyal, most passionate, most articulate group of -- I'm not even gonna say fans. I'm going with "peeps" -- that any cult oddity such as my bad self could have dreamt of. When almost no one was watching, when people probably should have STOPPED watching, I've had three constants: my family and friends, my collaborators (often the same), and y'all. A lot of stories have come out about my "dark years", and how I'm "unrecognized"... I love these stories, because they make me seem super-important, but I have never felt the darkness (and I'm ALL about my darkness) that they described. Because I have so much. I have people, in my life, on this site, in places I've yet to discover, that always made me feel the truth of success: an artist and an audience communicating. Communicating to the point of collaborating. I've thought, "maybe I'm over; maybe I've said my piece". But never with fear. Never with rancor. Because of y'all. Because you knew me when. If you think topping a box office record compares with someone telling you your work helped them through a rough time, you're probably new here.

Joss is an amazing writer and director, and his success on a global commercial scale is well-deserved. We just hope he agrees to write and direct Avengers 2.

Photo: Zade Rosenthal/MVLFFLLC/Marvel

Posted on May 18, 2012

Your Ad Could Be Here!
Get your message out with a text advertorial. Text Advertorials consist of 50 words of text, a graphic and link to your website. Click here to request our rate card!

Hailey Leithauser Wins the 2012 Emily Dickinson First Book Award

Hailey Leithauser has won the 2012 Emily Dickinson First Book Award. The award is given by the Poetry Foundation to an American poet of at least 40 years of age who has yet to publish a first collection.

Greywolf Press will publish Leithauser's book-length poetry manuscript Swoop in October 2013. She also will receive a $10,000 prize, and be honored at the Pegasus Awards ceremony on June 11th.

Jeff Shotts, the poetry editor at Graywolf, had this to say about the winning manuscript: "Leithauser is a risk-taker. She is innovative -- with spirited titles and musical outbursts�but also nods to poetic tradition with rhyming sonnets and other lyric techniques. I take delight in so many of these lines and stanzas. I am engaged, throughout, and admire her wide-ranging talent."

Leithauser stopped writing poetry for several decades, but returned to it in 2000. Since then her poetry has appeared in The Antioch Review, The Gettysburg Review, Pleiades, Best American Poetry, and Poetry. In 2004 she won the Discovery/The Nation Award and received an individual artist's grant from the Maryland Arts Council. She has served as the senior reference librarian at the Department of Energy in Washington, D.C., and holds a a BA in English literature and a master's in library and information science, both from the University of Maryland.

You can read her poem "Fever" here.

Posted on May 17, 2012

Bradley Cooper is a Frustrated Novelist in The Words

The Words Movie Poster

Bradley Cooper and Zoe Saldana star in The Words, a film about a struggling novelist who finds an abandoned masterpiece. The novel he finds his so brilliant that he starts typing the words in his computer just to see what it feels like to write so well. You know what happens next -- he passes the work off as his own and is hailed as this generation's Hemingway. Then the real author (played by Ben Barnes as a young man and Jeremy Irons as his older self) shows up, and things gets really complicated. It looks quite interesting. The film also stars Olivia Wilde and Dennis Quaid. Take a look:

Photo: CBS Films

Posted on May 17, 2012

Featured Sections

Jobs and Markets

Community

Special Sections

Resources

Search Tools

Site Information

Search

Kindle: The World's Bestselling E-reader