Book Review: Lonesome Lies Before Us

Book Review: Lonesome Lies Before Us

A Musician Finds His Voice By DeWitt Henry, Literary Bookmarks Editor LONESOME LIES BEFORE US: A NOVEL by Don Lee (Norton, 2017). 336pp, $26.95. Don Lee’s fourth novel is a masterpiece, an anti-romance romance between a once-promising alt-country singer and song-writer and a once-promising photographer, both of whom have given up careers (and the lovers once…

WTP Writer: Jacqueline Crooks

WTP Writer: Jacqueline Crooks

Short-story author and novelist Jacqueline Crooks Looking Back on 2016 Interview by Jo Ely, Contributing Editor Jacqueline Crooks is a Jamaican-born, British short-story writer whose main subjects are migration and Caribbean subcultures. Crooks is A Wasafiri Prize runner-up, and the first chapter of her novel Fire Rush was published by Granta (WW15, the Anthology of New Writing,…

Fictional Characters and Autobiography– Part 1

Fictional Characters and Autobiography– Part 1

Writing Character: One Most Like Yourself By Elissa Field  The impetus for this article arose from a small tangent during a fabulous workshop I participated in with author Ann Hood. Among stories I’ve worked on in the past, I knew who my trickiest, most elusive or least successful characters were, but hadn’t noticed a pattern until an offhand comment…

Woven Tale Press Editor Jo Ely | In Her Own Words

Woven Tale Press Editor Jo Ely | In Her Own Words

 Writing My First Novel Jo Ely [dropcap]I[/dropcap]f truly committed, one can always find time to write–poet Salena Godden gets up at 4 am, and short story writer and novelist Jacqueline Crooks would write on buses and trains, commuting to her seven-day-a-week job. Not many people have that kind of commitment, and I am no exception. I…

Writing—an elusive art of wisps and webs

Writing—an elusive art of wisps and webs

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]riting is such an elusive art. Writers are often cagey about the origin of their creations when asked where the story started. Not every story is explainable. There are the kinds that start with a wisp of an idea, which is flushed out after years of research. Other stories draw the writer into its web,…