Samuel Snoek-Brown

Attend a literary reading in your underwear

You know you’ve always wanted to. Now, thanks to the Lit Demon, you can attend a whole reading series from the comfort of your bathrobe. The website that’s bringing you online creative writing workshops and editing services and a range of other awesomeness is now scheduling a series of readings, online, streaming live right into yourContinue reading “Attend a literary reading in your underwear”

A signed copy Box Cutters if you help Molly Gaudry fly

Do you know Molly Gaudry? Because you should. I don’t want to bury the lead, so if you want to get to know her, start by helping her out at Fly with Molly. But more on that in the minute. I mention this because I’m a huge fan of Molly. She’s a hell of a writer —Continue reading “A signed copy Box Cutters if you help Molly Gaudry fly”

Every Kiss a War, from Leesa Cross-Smith

I just bought Leesa Cross-Smith‘s debut story collection, Every Kiss a War, out from Mojave River Press. I was going to buy this book anyway, because I’m a fan of Cross-Smith’s work, both in terms of her own fiction and in terms of her fantastic literary magazine, WhiskeyPaper. (I had a story in WhiskeyPaper aContinue reading “Every Kiss a War, from Leesa Cross-Smith”

Erasing the grade

Today I found this article in my Facebook newsfeed: “Wellesley Initiates New Grading Policy for First-Year Students.” And it’s about damn time. The idea is to institute “shadow grades,” which means professors will provide traditional letter grades for those students who want to know, but it removes those grades from the institution itself, recording only pass/fail grades onContinue reading “Erasing the grade”

My Writing Process

By now, you’ve probably heard about this whole #MyWritingProcessTour thing, a kind of literary chain-letter meme that’s been making the rounds among writers lately. It’s a fun project, I think, because it gives us all a bit of insight into each other’s writing lives and it helps introduce each other to other writers. In fact,Continue reading “My Writing Process”

Another YA author you should get to know!

A couple of days ago, I wrote about the up-and-coming Michelle Modesto, whose forthcoming YA novel is going to be awesome. Then yesterday, I was at the Terroir Creative Writing Festival in McMinnville, OR, where I met another YA author, Jennifer M. Hartsock. And gang, I’m telling you now, if you’re a YA fan, putContinue reading “Another YA author you should get to know!”

This is the YA author you need to keep an eye on

A handful of years ago, I met Michelle Modesto right here on this blog: she left some comments, I left some replies, and pretty soon we were swapping ideas about writing. She was just starting out as a writer, and we talked craft quite a bit, both here and via email. Michelle has a ton of talent andContinue reading “This is the YA author you need to keep an eye on”

This weekend in literature: Terroir Creative Writing Festival and Ink Noise Review

This weekend, I’ll be at a couple of writing-related events in Oregon, if you’re in the area and want to say hi. On Saturday, April 19, I’ll be down in McMinnville at the Terroir Creative Writing Festival, held on the Yamhill campus of Chemeketa Community College. I went last year in support of my friendContinue reading “This weekend in literature: Terroir Creative Writing Festival and Ink Noise Review”

Gabriel García Márquez has died . . .

. . . Long live Gabriel García Márquez. I was a late-comer to García Márquez, having never been assigned his seminal One Hundred Years of Solitude in high school, as so many others had been. I first picked him up a handful of years ago when I was browsing a bookstore in a fit of indecision, unsureContinue reading “Gabriel García Márquez has died . . .”

Dream journal: Meryl Streep in the mall

I sometimes have dreams so vivid I have to write them down when I wake up. Sometimes those things wind up in notebooks, other times they wind up on Facebook (and sometimes they wind up as fiction), but except for a couple of old Writer’s Notebook entries (this one, and this one), I haven’t reallyContinue reading “Dream journal: Meryl Streep in the mall”