Pep Talks
We recruited an all-star team of authors to share their advice and thoughts on writing. Their pep talks will be emailed to participants throughout November. We hope their insight and encouragement help you on your way! (And if you’re hungry for more writerly encouragement, you can read all past pep talks from previous years here.)
Chris Cleave
Chris Cleave is the author of the novels Incendiary and Little Bee, which was a #1 New York Times bestseller and shortlisted for the Costa Award for Best Novel of 2008. Both books have been published in twenty countries worldwide. He lives in Kingston-upon-Thames with his wife and three children. Visit him at www.chriscleave.com or on Twitter @chriscleave. (photo credit: Niall McDiarmid)
Jonathan Lethem
Jonathan Lethem has written eight novels that you know about. He lives in California and Maine. (photo credit: John Lucas)
Erin Morgenstern
Erin Morgenstern is a writer and artist. She is the author of The Night Circus. Most of her writings and paintings are fairy tales in one way or another. She lives in Massachusetts. (photo credit: Kelly Davidson)
Audrey Niffenegger
Audrey Niffeneger is the author of The Time Traveler’s Wife, which became an international best seller, and has been made into a movie. Miss Niffenegger’s second novel, Her Fearful Symmetry, was published in 2009 by Scribner (USA), Jonathan Cape (UK) and many other fine publishers around the world. In 2008 she made a serialized graphic novel for the London Guardian, The Night Bookmobile, which was published in book form in September, 2010. She is working on her third novel, The Chinchilla Girl in Exile. Miss Niffenegger taught book arts for many years as a professor in Columbia College’s MFA program in Interdisciplinary Book and Paper Arts. She is now on the faculty of the Columbia College Fiction Writing Department.
Brandon Sanderson
Brandon Sanderson has published six solo novels with Tor Books–Elantris, the Mistborn trilogy, Warbreaker, and The Way of Kings–as well as four books in the middle-grade Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians series from Scholastic. He was chosen to complete Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series; 2009′s The Gathering Storm and 2010′s Towers of Midnight will be followed by the final book, A Memory of Light, in 2012. His newest Mistborn novel, The Alloy of Law,will be released in November 2011. Currently living in Utah with his wife and children, Brandon teaches creative writing at Brigham Young University.
Deb Olin Unferth
Deb Olin Unferth is the author of the memoir Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War, the story collection Minor Robberies, and the novel Vacation. Her work has been published in Harper’s, McSweeney’s, The Believer, the New York Times, the Boston Review, and elsewhere. She has received two Pushcart Prizes, the Cabell First Novel Award, and a Creative Capital Grant for Innovative Literature. She teaches at Wesleyan University. (photo credit: Margaret Olin)
