Presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s blurt that a woman pregnant from a rape “make the best out of a bad situation” has many female journalists fuming. Some have come up with a flurry of interesting questions that sound absurd at face value but–considering how our courts work–could just end up happening.
Recognizing that Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback [...]

Don’t Sabotage Your Submission by Chris Roerden is the most informative, helpful book I’ve read about writing. A revamping of the award-winning Don’t Murder Your Mystery, the book offers 230 positive examples of effective techniques to save your manuscript from turning up dead on arrival. First-screeners are merciless and will pitch your manuscript into the [...]

Each day, more than 8,000 girls suffer the mental, emotional and physical torture of genital mutilation. That’s a United Nations statistic and also the last comment in the film “Desert Flower,” the story of supermodel Waris Dirie, who endured female genital mutilation at age five.
It would be flippant to call Dirie’s life a Cinderella story. [...]

Next to writing every day, I count constructive feedback from fellow writers most beneficial to my writing career. I belong to two groups. They meet on the same day, for two hours each, on the first and third Wednesdays of the month: one in the morning; one in the afternoon. Since we all live and [...]

Of the dozens of books on NPR’s Best Books of 2011 list, I’ve read none. Seems I’m always a few years—or decades—behind. Among the many titles that caught my eye, several stand out, some for no other reason than the length of their titles.
Take Catherynne M. Valente’s The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In A Ship [...]