Category Archives: Uncategorized

Finding silver linings to a pandemic sometimes feels uplifting and sometimes feels feckless, but how can we possibly get through these days if we don’t seek out and celebrate the positives? I work at a university with a lovely performing … Continue reading →

As I hunker down in these strange days both filled and emptied by Covid-19, I find myself thinking often of one of my most deeply held beliefs about reading: we learn from books how to face challenges in our lives. … Continue reading →

If you’re here, you know me as the author of books for young readers. You may not know that I’m also an actress. In 2015, some twenty years after I took my final bow in college, I stuck my toe … Continue reading →

I’m in the early stages of a new project, and I’ve learned one of the best approaches to these first months with new characters is to let them mill about on their own in my mind. Sometimes I press them … Continue reading →

On the twentieth anniversary of the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, as many of us look back on our first meeting with the boy wizard, it seems appropriate to consider the topic of re-reading. Some will take … Continue reading →

I like to nod, then look at that, or so it seems. Anyone who reads drafts of my writing–my agent, my editor, my critique partners–may know already the significance of that strange sentence. Even readers of this post who have never … Continue reading →

A very specialized sub-genre of blog post is the author’s story of how she got her agent. I never told my story, and then it turned out my story was still in process, so it’s a good thing I waited. … Continue reading →

I have spent the past two-and-a-half weeks at an artist’s residency in Dorset, Vermont. The Marble House Project is a truly amazing residency that offers eight artists of various kinds unlimited time to make art. Here with me are two … Continue reading →

It seems to me there are two ways to liken writing a story to making a sculpture: the story can be molded from a shapeless mass of clay or it can be hewn from a solid block of stone. Both … Continue reading →