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Aube Rey Lescure Discusses her Début Novel, River East River West

Shanghai, 2007: Fourteen-year-old Alva was born and raised in China by her American expat mother. Her hopes of moving to America are dashed when her mother becomes engaged to Lu Fang, their Chinese landlord, whose own dreams were curtailed by the country’s harsh political reforms. In a stunning reversal of the east-to-west immigrant narrative and set against China’s political history and…

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Author Shilpi Suneja Discusses Her Epic Debut HOUSE OF CARAVANS

One family burdened with division over three generations. Shilpi Suneja‘s debut novel, House of Caravans (September 2023, Milkweed Editions), chronicles the birth of Pakistan and an independent India with grace, scrutiny, and depth. Somehow, she manages this saga in just over 300 pages – her skillful prose does not shy away from the physical or emotional violence of Partition or its continued…

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Interview with Mary Carroll Moore, Author of A Woman’s Guide to Search and Rescue

Many of us know her from her newsletter, Your Weekly Writing Exercise, chock-full of craft tips, writing exercises, and inspiration; or have used her book, Your Book Starts Here, to plot our stories. We’ve benefitted from her W-structure workshop and participated in her writing retreats. Mary Carroll Moore became a published fiction author in 2009 with her debut novel, Qualities of Light. Her…

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Christy Cashman Discusses her Debut Novel, The Truth About Horses

The Truth About Horses, Christy Cashman’s debut novel, is a wonderful mix of psychological and equestrian drama, with enough magical realism to keep you off balance. Fourteen-year-old Reese’s dream of winning a big race is shattered when her horse, Trusted Treasure, falls at the last jump. While still reeling, her family suffers a second trauma that results in closing their ranch, Trusted…

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Kathryn Crawley Talks About Her Debut Novel, "Walking on Fire"

In her debut novel, “Walking on Fire,” author Kathryn Crawley tapped into her early career in speech pathology when she worked at a center in Thessaloniki for Greek children with cerebral palsy from 1974 to 1976.The novel features Kate, from Texas, who ventures to Thessaloniki, Greece, in 1974 amid the aftermath of a seven-year dictatorship and rising anti-American sentiment. As she immerses…

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Next Chapters: Karen Wilfrid

Next Chapters is a biweekly feature spotlighting graduates of GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator program, which has been running since 2010. Novel Incubator Year: 10 Current Project: forthcoming middle grade novel Just Lizzie about a teenage girl discovering her asexual identity credit: John Pelletier Tell us about a book you can’t stop talking or thinking about. I love the book Lizard Radio by Pat…

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Kate Fussner Talks About Her Debut Novel-In-Verse, The Song of Us

Photo credit: Cameron Dryden A “verse novel”, or “novel in verse”, is a novel-length narrative told via poetry. It also happens to be one of literature’s fastest-growing categories, extremely popular with young readers. The Song of Us is Kate Fussner’s debut novel in verse, a Middle Grade love story between two seventh-grade girls, mirroring the Greek romantic tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice. The…

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Meet Nancy Crochiere, Author of GRACELAND

In Nancy Crochiere’s hilarious debut, Graceland, a single mom is forced to chase her Elvis-obsessed mother and pink-haired teenaged daughter from Boston to Memphis to stop them from revealing a long-held secret. This madcap road-trip novel will make you laugh out loud and move you as these three strong women, each in her own way, careen toward an unexpected destination: self-acceptance,…

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Pick up Becky Chalsen’s Kismet and Dream of Summer!

Becky Chalsen’s debut novel, Kismet, set on a remote part of Fire Island, is the perfect book to take to the beach this summer. Available April 18 from Dutton, Kismet explores what happens to thirty-year-old Amy Sharp during the week before her twin-sister’s wedding, when—already protecting a painful secret and questioning the decisions she’s made in life—Amy realizes that the groom’s best man is…

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Next Chapters: E.B. Moore

Next Chapters is a biweekly feature spotlighting graduates of GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator program, which has been running since 2010. Novel Incubator Year: 1 Current Project: Loose in the Bright Fantastic, a forthcoming novel (Frayed Edge Press May 16, 2023) What writers have most influenced your writing? In high school the darkness of Wuthering Heights consumed me, sticking with me along…

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Next Chapters: Shalene Gupta

Next Chapters is a biweekly feature spotlighting graduates of GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator program, which has been running since 2010. Novel Incubator Year: 8 Current Project: The PMS Problem (Flatiron ’24), Nonfiction What is your work when you’re not writing? I write for a living. I co-wrote a book on business and trust, and I’m in the process of writing a nonfiction book (due next month to…

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Interview with Zakariah Johnson, Author of Egg on Her Face

Zakariah Johnson’s Egg on Her Face: Stories of Crime, Horror, and the Space in Between is a gripping, genre-bending short story collection that will take you to unexpected places. These sharply observed stories focus on the struggle to survive in desolate sometimes surreal settings, bringing to mind the work of Jack London with a dash of Black Mirror. “For those of us who continue the labor of…

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Eulogy for an Unpublished Novel

Saint Jerome Writing-Caravaggio Let’s start with the good news before we get to the complicated feelings: my debut novel Lightborne is coming out next year. And I am ecstatic! Lightborne is a historical novel about Christopher Marlowe, an Elizabethan playwright and contemporary of Shakespeare who died violently and young, under somewhat mysterious circumstances. Rumored to have been a government…

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Next Chapters: John McClure

Next Chapters is a biweekly feature spotlighting graduates of GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator program, which has been running since 2010. Novel Incubator Year: 9 Current Project: There Is No Bear on Our Lake, literary fiction Photo Credit: Kasey LeBlanc What writers have most influenced your writing? Margaret Atwood, for unflinching insight, reckless imagination, killer zingers, and patience. Jesse…

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THIS POST WILL SELF-DESTRUCT: A PREVIEW OF CRAFT ON DRAFT, SUSPENSE EDITION, WITH HENRIETTE LAZARIDIS, DAN FOGARTY, AND LISE HAINES

I first learned about one of Alfred Hitchcock’s maxims for suspense in a GrubStreet class. Say five people are sitting around a table talking about baseball or playing poker – suddenly, a bomb goes off. It’s shocking, but the minutes leading up the explosion are wasted, in a sense. What if instead, you know from the start of the scene that a bomb is ticking, just underneath that table. What was…

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Emiko Jean Discusses AAPI Princess Stories and Her New Sequel, Tokyo Dreaming

In Emiko Jean’s Tokyo Ever After—a Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick and New York Times bestseller—main character Izumi Tanaka is a high school teen turned Japanese royalty overnight. After learning her father is the Crown Prince of Japan, she’s dropped into a strange, new world of politics and protocols, royal heritage, and self-discovery. Oh, and she meets a handsome bodyguard, too. Between not…

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Meet Amina Akhtar, Author of Kismet

Acclaimed author Amina Akhtar’s fiercely funny and twisty new thriller, Kismet, is a razor-sharp takedown of Sedona’s crystal-hugging wellness community. It’s also the thought-provoking story of Ronnie Khan: a young, self-effacing Pakistani-American woman who follows her seemingly perfect best friend, Marley, into the desert on a quest for self-improvement that turns toxic. With wicked gurus,…

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