Tuesday
November 19, 2019
7:00pm

Harvard Book Store and GrubStreet welcome Nina MacLaughlin—the acclaimed local author of the memoir Hammer Head: The Making of a Carpenter—for a discussion of her highly anticipated fiction debut, Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung.

The first time you publish a book, it’s a pretty surreal experience. First you wallow deliciously in the dreams and hopes that have built up inside you for years. Eventually, you learn to deal with the inflated expectations that breathless articles about the writing life have created in you. And then, when you make a sale, you have to wade through a lot of conflicting information: reconciling what your publisher promises with the sometimes demoralizing advice you get from other first-time authors (who often just don’t seem quite as happy as you think they should be).

With an eye to ...

Our nine-month Novel Generator program is designed to help students at all levels complete (or make substantial progress toward completing) a first draft of a novel in an environment that offers support, accountability and feedback appropriate to this early stage in the novel-writing process. 

The combination of craft instruction, accountability, instructor feedback, and class continuity in the Novel Generator has helped our students to leave the program with either a finished draft, or a partial draft and a clear path to the ending.

Applications for the Spring 2020 Novel Generator are due Monday, December 2nd, at 11:59pm (EST).

Learn ...

The November 2019 edition of "Writing Life Essentials," a monthly hand-curated list of contests, grants, scholarships, submissions calls, and awards, with a focus on opportunities that are at least one of the following: local, free to apply, and/or committed to celebrating and supporting writers from historically marginalized communities. We do the research, so you have more time for what matters: the writing. Or, stuffing tofurkies. That matters too.

Wednesday, Nov. 13th at 7:00 pm

Brookline Booksmith Used Book Cellar

For John Freeman—literary critic, essayist, editor, poet, “one of the preeminent book people of our time” (Dave Eggers)—it is the rare moment when words are not enough. But in the wake of the election of 2016, words felt useless, even indulgent. Action was the only reasonable response. He took to the streets in protest ...