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Change the way you look at things, and the things you look at change. ~Dr. Wayne Dyer Author readings, open mics, and pop-up literary events thrive in Northwestern Pennsylvania, where I lived for [...]

I could prescribe any of a dozen antibiotics to cure endocarditis, or even a thrombolytic agent to stave off a heart attack; but what I yearned for was the elixir of poetry, which could heal the [...]

As a war-literature author, I frequently face questions about authenticity. Readers want to know: What authority do you have in this field? How did you convey war without experiencing it? These [...]

How does a writer—of memoir or fiction—develop authentic characters and deepen characterization? How do we write characters, real or imagined, in the fullness of their being? About this central [...]

The true art of memory is the art of attention. Poet, essayist, novelist, lexicographer—Samuel Johnson knew a little something about words and their power to name, capture, liberate, create. * * [...]

You and your friends enter a restaurant, hungry and looking forward to a good meal. The name of the restaurant is La Toscana. You are dreaming of a good meal of crostini, gnocchi, and maybe even [...]

The assignment was to write about the sex life of one of the kings of England. I was a sophomore at a small Catholic high school in Virginia. Our history teacher was a man, not one of the Sisters [...]

We all know a photo is worth a thousand words. So did Dorothea Lange. She used her photos to do the heavy lifting that writers do with words. The work is always to tell a story, stir emotions, [...]

Memoir is not an autobiography but rather a selected aspect of a life. No event in your life is too small, but the details are important. There is a universality to memoirs. Honesty and [...]