In this post, GrubStreet instructor Ben Berman considers the tension between the pleasures of writing and the pressures of being a writer.

The other day we were at some friends’ house when I found myself in a conversation with their six-year-old son.

My dad told me that you’re a writer, he said.

I had the distinct honor of introducing my dear friend Debbie Plummer at the Harvard Book Store last week as she launched her new book, Some of My Best Friends Are... The Daunting Challenges and Untapped Potential of Cross-Racial Friendships.   Below is a truncated version of my remarks. 

When writing the fiction of violence, Katrin Schumann finds that there are no easy answers about how to get it right. This article first appeared in CrimeReads.

Years ago in a writing workshop in San Francisco, a lanky middle-aged student sitting next to me held his pages in trembling fingers. He began to read aloud a story about a body found in the trunk of a car. As he read, we all listened attentively, drawn in at first by the obvious questions: who was this woman and what had happened to her? We were trying to learn to become better writers

We always knew the GrubStreet community was bursting with talent, but with more book publications between 2018 and 2019 than we’ve ever seen before—from students, instructors, staff, and other community members—we're celebrating with a new author-to-author conversation series featuring just some of the Grubbies whose books are "pubbing" this year. Read on to find out what authors Katrin Schumann and Crystal King have to say about drafting, research, and those one-star Amazon reviews.