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In a cover interview in the February issue of Keyboard magazine, the brilliant jazz pianist Keith Jarrett drops an arresting line in one of his answers. Never one to mince words, he laments “this stupid world we live in” in the context of...
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We’re told that to create an engaging story we need to know what motivates our characters. What do they want? What do they long for? What’s at stake ? “Motivation, based on a character’s beliefs, family, and environmental and cultural...
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I just completed the five full seasons of HBO’s The Wire and am suffering withdrawal pangs. I’m not sure why, but this show and I failed to connect when it was first shown. Fortunately, two of my current magazine colleagues, one former colleague...
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For me, the ultimate compliment to a book is when I let it not only retain a spot on an increasingly crowded bookshelf, but resolve to read it in its entirety a second time. That is the case with Tom Rachman ’s debut novel, The Imperfectionists...
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Happy Thanksgiving to all our readers and contributors. At The Writer offices in suburban Milwaukee, it’s been a quiet holiday week, with half the staff away on vacations. My colleague Sarah Lange and I have been steering the ship in their absence...
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Like many people, I’ve long marveled at Garrison Keillor’s ability to spin a tale on A Prairie Home Companion . The more I read about him, the more it sounded like he had an uncanny ability to regularly make up his entertaining stories at...
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We’re always pleased at the magazine to hear about good things happening to our contributors. Earlier this month, one of our frequent contributors, novelist William Kowalsk i (pictured below), got the kind of rave writers dream about. Writing in...
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Attention, Jack Reacher freaks (and that would include me and my Writer colleague Martha Lundin). In case you’re a fan of the hugely popular mystery series by Lee Child and missed the news, the first movie starring Jack, One Shot , is now filming...
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Maria Tatar , writing in The New York Times , looks at the changing standards for children’s books, comparing classics such as Peter Pan and Alice’s Adventure’s in Wonderland to modern works like Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book...
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The Writer is celebrating a big anniversary in 2012—125 years of publishing! We're planning some special things for our anniversary year, and one of them is our new photo gallery, "Where in the world is The Writer ?" We're looking...
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The staff at The Writer is really excited about our new essay/memoir contest . Even though the deadline isn’t until Nov. 30, it’s not too soon to start thinking about topics and working them out on paper (or on your screen). As editor of our...
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Here at WriterMag.com, we’re happy to offer another online-exclusive column, this one dedicated to keeping you inspired. Brandi-Ann Uyemura ( at left ), a freelance writer and contributor to The Writer magazine and this website, has been blogging...
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Real writers are readers first. Take Julie Orringer , for example. I met up with the author of the novel The Invisible Bridge at Boswell Book Company in Milwaukee back in April to talk about her creative process. When I asked her about her literary influences...
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On the CNN website , there’s an interesting look at the demise of Borders, once one of the four biggest bookstore chains in the U.S. and Canada (the others being Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million and Indigo/Chapters)--and arguably the most passionately...
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Vanity Fair manages to keep me hanging on to my subscription with a few noteworthy articles per issue, interspersed with (to me) unappealing articles about glitz and glam and actors and actresses. One of the magazine’s strengths, from my standpoint...
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Copyright © 2010 Kalmbach Publishing Co.
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