This is long delayed, but finally, I’m sharing my annual reading list. Not that it’s anything spectacular; continuing a trend, 2015 was an even lighter reading year than 2014 was — even when I count collected runs of comics issues as “books,” I’m down from 60 books to 42. This was partly because I set aside all reading in November to focus on draftingContinue reading “Booklist 2015, and the power of my students’ writing”
Author Archives: Samuel Snoek-Brown
Rattling language; wanting to write: Gay Degani on fiction collections and the writing life
It’s funny how writers find each other. Sometimes we meet at readings or conferences. Sometimes we’re fans of each other’s works. Sometimes we have mutual acquaintances and become friends online. With author Gay Degani, it’s been all three: I met Gay in a Facebook group for writers at almost the same time that I discoveredContinue reading “Rattling language; wanting to write: Gay Degani on fiction collections and the writing life”
The art of punctuation
Scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed this morning, I spotted an interesting piece at Medium.com about punctuation in novels — and only the punctuation. In the piece, Adam J. Calhoun talks about writing a computer code (available online for free) that reduces text to its punctuation — and nothing else. The image at the lead of his piece is aContinue reading “The art of punctuation”
Quite So: David S. Atkinson talks writing, reading, and his new story collection
Last year at AWP, I bunked up with David S. Atkinson. We guzzled coffee by the gallon and talked books for three days. Of course, I was already a fan: I loved David’s first book, Bones Buried in Dirt, and he and I were both guests on an online reading series at the (now sadlyContinue reading “Quite So: David S. Atkinson talks writing, reading, and his new story collection”
Writing news
It’s been a busy several weeks, gang, which is why I’ve been relatively quiet lately. But a few cool things have happened since I last updated, and there are some more cool things coming soon: We’ve had not one but TWO issues of Jersey Devil Press go live: the special Sherlock Holmes issue (the coverContinue reading “Writing news”
2015 is a year of kickass women
I’ve been cleaning up my study this week, shelving stacks of books and bagging issues of comics, and as I’ve been working, I’ve noticed something: This year has given us a lot of amazing women in art to celebrate. Films, comics, books, television — women are kicking ass. Two of my hands-down favorite films this year were Mad Max:Continue reading “2015 is a year of kickass women”
Your 2015 holiday shopping list: books, books, and books!
It’s been a great year for books, y’all. And now that the crunch is on for gift-giving season, I wanted to share some books published in the past year by friends of mine! There is a LOT to love here — poetry, prose, anthologies, even a few adult coloring books! So I’ve included some blurbsContinue reading “Your 2015 holiday shopping list: books, books, and books!”
My mother, my teacher
I just learned that my mother, a retired teacher with a 35-year career in elementary and middle-school classrooms, was a guest on Episode 14 of The Teaching Experience Podcast! In the interview, my mom talks about her lifelong love of teaching and learning, her devotion to teaching each student according to the context of that student’sContinue reading “My mother, my teacher”
Setting aside Chekhov’s gun
I love Anton Chekhov. His sense of story rooted in character and culture has long held me spellbound, and I hold him as an unreachable ideal for what the best of short fiction can look like. He also had some terrific writing advice, probably the most famous of which was in favor of necessity in the details: “RemoveContinue reading “Setting aside Chekhov’s gun”
NaNoWriMo 2015: the end is the beginning
Well, I have crossed the finish line and then some. As of today, my word count stands a little more than 57,500. Of course, as I said in my previous NaNoWriMo post, a lot of those words I’ll wind up throwing out, and I also know a lot of those words might stay but become drasticallyContinue reading “NaNoWriMo 2015: the end is the beginning”
Samuel Snoek-Brown 