Regarding the trad (traditional) wife lifestyle that has been widely promoted on social media platforms, Church believes that the history and reality of the lives of housewives from the 1950’s has not been fully explored by those who are glorifying this trend. As Church explains, “…when we take off the rose-colored glasses that we like to look back on history with and we really take a close look at what actually happened, sometimes what we find shocks us because I think we want to reminisce… but we’re not really exploring all the nuance that there was… and so when I see these trad wife movements and social media posts and stuff, I’m like, that is an alternative reality. It has definitely not been what most generations of women have experienced within the history of humanity so to idealize this… let’s really take a close examination of what that looked like for those who were housewives and really what their reality was.”

It starts with an issue or a theme, and then as I really start digging into that, that’s when a character comes to mind. I do plot a bit more than what I initially did.” -on the development of her stories

No one has a corner on depression, but housewives are working on it.”

In the novel, Parman also includes a touch of magical realism by giving the bees magical qualities, and she admits to not knowing much about them when she was first began writing the story. “I was fascinated to learn so much about them. It was tempting to put more information than I did in the book, but I didn’t want to overload the book so I just saved what I thought was just the most amazing facts to include… you think about scooping out a big spoonful of honey to put on your toast or English muffin… think about how much work that is for the bees, and it… made me think differently, about the work that bees do and how much we take for granted.” And while bees do perform a significant amount of work, their lives are surprisingly short. Parman explained that bees born in the summer can live from 12 up to 18 months, while those born in the winter do not live as long. “It’s not a long life, but it is the life they are given, and how they choose to use it and how we are the benefit as we are with so many things that bees do.”

Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.”

As readers may observe, a sense of grief and melancholy permeates throughout The Irish Goodbye . This is because O’Neill had initially set out to write a book about grief that centered around the events of September 11th. “…[9/11] is something that my family did experience. We lost a lot of people in the terrorist attack… my father’s company was on the 104th floor of the south tower. He wasn’t there, but his company lost 66 employees including a lot of my friends, a lot of my sister’s friends, our cousin, Peter, obviously a lot of people my father loved dearly… it was a really tragic, tragic day for us… grief can be really insidious and I always knew that that was something I wanted to write about. I just didn’t know exactly… what the story was and so when I did realize what the story was going to be for the Ryan family, a lot of things began to click for me there because I, kind of, found a way in.”

Through that experience, I got to witness the impact of grief on so many different levels – on the level of community, on the level of family, and on the level of the individual.” -on the impact of 9/11 which devastated her father’s business in the south tower of the World Trade Center

Death leaves a heartache no one can heal. Love leaves a memory no one can steal.”

For those who aspire to write, Lynn, a published author since 2015, shares some words of wisdom: “You’ve got to commit to it… also don’t be aiming for perfect because I think that is the other thing that stops people. You get that first draft done and you go and edit it, but instead, people will spend so much time on that first chapter… and you know what? …things will be cut. A lot of things are going to be cut or are going to be changed, and it’s a lot harder to do that when you have spent three months on this one scene, that then you find out you don’t need. Get to the end of that first draft. When you’ve got to the end of it and you know what you need, then you can edit until your heart’s content…” And how does she know when she’s done editing? “It’s when there’s no more niggles to go back and check, I think. You could have the niggles forever!”

It’s about the relationships between these women and all of them giving and sacrificing to achieve this life that they want.”

The Greeks were extremely ambivalent about the stories of Amazons; they found them both thrilling and rather daunting at the same time.”

As far as the immigrant experience, Tian noted that migrant families may feel some level of displacement about their identity especially when they grow up in a community that offers little connection to the traditions of their homeland. She reflected on how difficult immigrating to America must have been for her parents and their friends. “I have vast amounts of respect for my parents and their friends who came to the United States to build a life that would be easier for obviously our generation and I think that in many ways, we feel endlessly indebted to them for that decision and I think Stella feels that too in the story where she feels like… my parents did so much and how could I make this worthwhile for them… I think just by watching the immense amounts of sacrifices that they’ve made, you feel that you have to make it worthwhile to them in some way because it’s just incredible for them to [have] been able to do that.”

I wanted to be able to write about that concept of something potentially tragic happening in the family and how that lack of communication or that vacuum can create difficulty for everyone involved in being able to find closure and move on.”

All Americans have something lonely about them. I don’t know what the reason might be except maybe that they’re all descended from immigrants.”

Unlike other stories within this genre, Arnott’s heroes are not always virtuous. In fact, he believes that it is human imperfections that draw readers to the characters and it’s actually the villains, not the heroes, who make the story compelling. He noted, “…It’s also that reversal where somebody bad can redeem themselves or somebody good can fall from grace and I think it’s those sorts of stories that interest me… I think in a sense that’s one of the purposes of storytelling is that we follow things in stories that we wouldn’t necessarily want to happen to us, but we are curious to know how that affects the human condition… reading allows us to exercise our imagination and our empathy… when you read something you are actually entering into the mindset of somebody else and trying to imagine how you would feel in that situation.”

Plot is what happens to the characters, but story is what happens to the reader. We think, “Oh yeah, I’m going along with this… I’m inside of this story.”

Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.”

Throughout the collection, Eyre included several poignant haikus that pay tribute to the many people he met in college, some of whom have passed, and whom he had formed lifelong friendships with. It was important to him that their memories were reflected across the anthology. “…one of the poems is about a rocking chair, that an old rocking chair moves to all the memories stirring upon it, and many of those memories are of my classmates and friends from college… and I wanted to give them honor in a way that a short verse possibly could… give me a chance to do.” Another poem was about a friend who became the dean of an esteemed divinity school and held many degrees, but who still loved his Oklahoma roots and playing guitar, “and so I wrote ‘Deep Down, He’s Still an Oklahoma Boy Who Loves Three Chords and the Truth,’ and that was a way to honor him. He just passed on this year.”

It’s as if I moved the apostrophe to the left one space to be Writer’s Voices – I’ve adopted multiple voices in this book to try to give expression to different points of view.”

We can’t reach old age by another man’s road.”

In the novel, Rossi deliberately keeps the rock star’s name hidden. She explained her reasons for doing so and whether his character was based on a real-life musician. “There was no shortage of inspiration for him, but I also was very aware that there were some stories people know better than others and so there is the practical choice of like, it’s probably easiest not to name him, but… it took on a larger meaning to me because it doesn’t matter who he is, right? Men like him have had so much air time and he’s going to be fine. There’s not ever really been any accountability for men in power who abuse women or young girls really… he’s had his chance to tell his story and his story is the predominant narrative… so by taking his name out of it, I could really put the focus on her story… it’s about her and what she experienced.”

I feel like it’s looking back for something that never really existed and something you could never hold, and therefore, it’s kind of safe in that way because it can’t disappoint you, because it was never real.”

In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.”

In Ink Ribbon Red, crime novel writer, Alex Pavesi, presents his latest mystery thriller about a group of friends who trek to a remote location in the English countryside for a murder mystery birthday weekend. The host, Anatol, has invited his friends to join him for his 30th birthday and wants them to partake in Read More

While many parts of the novel are fictional, Starting From Here is also semi-autobiographical. Saunders herself left home at a young age to become a dancer and encountered many of the same challenges as René. She playfully remarked that she’s drawn to these kinds of stories because she has no imagination. However, she noted, “I must have some imagination because obviously this is all made up… this is all constructed so I do have that kind of imagination, but also I have a really reflective mind. I reflect a lot and I try to take from what I’ve experienced and integrate it into my life, and these books are part of that work. I heard a woman… she’s a priest in the Cheyenne tradition and she said that an elder once told her that if you can’t take your experiences and make them part of your life, you are a dilettante. I heard this recently and I just thought it was so fascinating because I was like, I get that.”

I want to use the experiences I’ve had to understand life in a bigger way and that’s why, I think that’s why, I’m drawn to this kind of work.”

To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful. This is power, it is glory on Earth and it is yours for the taking.”