From adolescent non-reader to adult writer of crime thrillers, the story of award-winning author Amanda Kyle Williams is as inspiring as it is surprising. Throw in surviving a chemical addiction and endometrial cancer, and it becomes nothing short of miraculous. If you ask Williams how it happened, she’ll tell you it can only be explained […]
Category Archives: Author Interviews
On October 13th, Lynn Cullen launched her ambitious new novel, Twain’s End. It examines the complicated last years of the most popular man in America–Mark Twain–and the even more complex life of Samuel Clemens, the flesh and blood man behind that pseudonymous mask. Yesterday, in the first of this two-part interview, I asked Cullen how her research on this […]
(Last week, Brenda Lloyd reviewed Lynn Cullen’s latest novel, Twain’s End. If you missed this review, you can read it by clicking here. If you know Cullen only from Mrs. Poe, you can learn more in my earlier interview, linked here.) Just a little over two years ago, Lynn Cullen published Mrs. Poe, her story […]
I first met Nicole Seitz at Palmetto Christian Academy (PCA), a private Christian-based school that I was visiting for my son’s upcoming academic year. Clad in a smock apron, Nicole smiled warmly and had a smear of paint on her high cheekbones (though I may have imagined that part). Her personality was wholly and gracefully […]
On May 12, 2015, Georgia State University announced that Dr. Pearl Amelia McHaney has been named the new Kenneth M. England Professor of Southern American Literature, a prestigious title formerly given to only one other GSU professor, her husband, Dr. Thomas L. McHaney. Both the McHaneys agree they could never have predicted the parallels in […]
Zobie Marsh hides the fearsome talent of prophecy. Young, poor and grieving the loss of her beloved Black Gram, she leaves home suddenly to avoid the advances of her mother’s latest boyfriend. Her decision to travel to South Carolina sets in motion Heavenscribe, a spiritual transformation devised by angels to aid a dying world. Bel […]
Several years ago, I attended the 26th Annual Iowa Summer Writing Festival, the non-credit affiliate of the famed Iowa Writers’ Workshop, whose graduates fill the ranks of the best and brightest in American letters. Ours was a workshop class of 12 aspiring novelists which ran the gamut of genres – literary, historical, women’s fiction, and crime. I […]
In Part 1 of my interview with Lynn Cullen (see July 30th), I briefly discussed her break-out novel, Mrs. Poe. But as Cullen says herself, “It takes years to figure out your craft and the industry. Those who want a short cut, well, it doesn’t happen.” Back when she was a young mother finishing her English […]
Received this post as an email? Click on the blue title to read in your browser. I hadn’t seen my friend Lynn Cullen since the launch of her historical novel Reign of Madness in 2011, though we’d been in touch via email. But this morning we were meeting for breakfast at Goldberg’s Deli in Toco […]
Did you receive this post via email? Please click on the title to read in your browser. Tuesday, I introduced you to military biographer Robert Coram, told you about his background, and discussed his approach to writing. Today–a bit about his biographies, the three he’s published and the one still in draft stage. Boyd: The […]
Readers Unbound 