Penguin

Good children's literature is a serious business. Not serious as in boring or "improving", but serious in attention and ambition, serious about beauty and wonder, about engaging the brain but also the heart, about sadness and difficulty, but also about silliness and joy. Above all, it is serious about the legitimacy of a child's world - which is a world away from being child-ish.

The first time I signed up for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), I failed. The story idea I'd come up with on October 31 ran out of steam after about 20,000 words and so did I. So I came back the next year ready to learn from my mistakes and get that coveted first NaNoWriMo "win." Here's what I did.

A novelist friend told me that social media is pretty much mandatory these days, otherwise I could expect to remain plankton in a sea of fish all swimming toward the same accolades. As a poet, I'm already used to being a small fry, yet as I move into writing journalism and creative nonfiction, I've wondered whether I should log back on.

Anyone who follows publishing knows that it loves to celebrate a disruptor. Disruptor is a label thrown at anything new, and publishing is unusually easy to disrupt because it is particularly slow to change.  Read more

Though the pandemic caused financial hardship for many independent bookstores, particularly those in cities and states that forced retailers to close their doors for months, it has also paved the way for a mini-boom of bookstore openings. "I've gotten a lot of, ‘Why would you open during a pandemic?  Read more