ARCHIVE FOR Ren C. Smith

It's never too early to start mentally prepping for next year's Muse & the Marketplace conference, especially as the Muse is happening earlier next year—April 6-8, 2018, to be precise. Get a jump on your #Muse18 strategy with this advice for first-timers—and anxious young writers in general—from GrubStreet's Program Coordinator, Lauren Smith.

In this series, "Why I Write," members of the Grub community share what compels them to put words onto paper day after day.

In the seventh grade, I sat at my best friend’s kitchen table, on the verge of telling her something huge. I was going to admit that I was...well, I didn’t know exactly what, but I knew that girls made my heart beat a little faster than I thought they should. Especially her, but that was a confession for another day.

One of Chicago Tribune’s “30 Books to Read This Summer,” Lindsay Hatton’s debut novel, Monterey Bay, released tomorrow, follows precocious Margot Fiske, a fifteen-year-old relocated to Monterey Bay by her father, as she navigates a relationship with an older biologist