1/4/14 – BECOMING A POET IN MID-LIFE: PETER M. GORDON, POET
For anyone who views a writing career as an impossible dream, poet Peter M. Gordon is an inspiration. After a 30-year career in creative work that has included theatre directing, writing, teaching, and television programming, Peter reinvented himself as a poet after the age of 50 – and very successfully so. (Continue Reading)
12/10/13 – INTERVIEW WITH ANTON DiSCLAFANI, AUTHOR OF THE YONAHLOSSEE RIDING CAMP FOR GIRLS
Last month, in my review of The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls, I talked about
Anton DiSclafani
what a fascinating character Thea Atwell is. She’s also a controversial character. The New York Times called her “an impetuous, headstrong heroine, who often seems like a 1930s version of Scarlett O’Hara.” NPR Books said she’s a “budding feminist,” and The Boston Globe suggested she’s “impossible to like.”
Given the complexity of this character, I couldn’t wait to interview Anton DiSclafani, the author who created her. (Continue Reading)
11-23-13 INTERVIEW WITH JUSTIN KRAMON, AUTHOR OF THE PRESERVATIONIST
Last month, I reviewed Justin Kramon’s new thriller The Preservationist. This time, I interview the author. When I first met Justin Kramon in 2010, he spoke to the Annapolis Chapter of Maryland Writers Association about his well-received first novel Finny. His vivid characters and confident writing style were impressive for an author still in his twenties. I interviewed him then for MWA’s Pen in Hand. He continues to be a thoughtful and engaging interviewee. (Continue Reading)
11/17/13 MYSTERY LOVES COMPANY
Would you like to go where they really know your name? Better yet, if you read mysteries, they know what you want to read?
Try your local independent mystery bookstore. I drove across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge last week to the quiet shores of Oxford, Maryland, to drop in on Kathy Harig and the Mystery Loves Company Bookstore. An energetic woman with short white hair wearing a blue turtleneck and corduroy slacks, Harig greeted me with a smile as she waved good-bye to a woman bemoaning the fate of two handsome oak trees in town. The store is on the main street in a building dating from 1900—it’s on the Historic Register–and used as a bank and then a post office for 30 years each. (Continue Reading)
11/4/13 – INTERVIEW WITH MARIAN SZCZEPANSKI, AUTHOR OF PLAYING ST. BARBARA
Marian Szczepanski
Novelist Marian Szczepanski and I met at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference in the summer of 1993. We recently reconnected through a mutual Facebook friend who had just reviewed Marian’s new (and first!) novel, Playing St. Barbara. Marian was gracious enough to catch me up on the missing twenty years, including how she came to write this historical novel chronicling the brutal lives and enduring spirit of Depression-era immigrant coal-mining families in southwestern Pennsylvania. (Continue Reading)
10/4/13 — INTERVIEW WITH LINDA MARIANIELLO, LITERARY TRANSLATOR 
Life takes us funny places. Decades ago I played in the Yale Symphony Orchestra with Linda Marianiello, who had transferred to Yale and had the reputation – more than well-deserved – as a phenomenal flautist. I recently learned that Linda has turned her musical training, liberal arts education, and other considerable skills to literary and book translation, a field that constitutes 3% of all book publishing in the US today. I grabbed the chance to catch up with Linda to find out not only how her life took this turn but also learn something about what exactly literary translation requires of a writer. (Continue Reading)
Carolyn Sienkiewicz does the extraordinary. Last night I heard the Peabody-trained oboist play with the American Balalaika Symphony.
I’ve read her articles in Cruising World, Living Aboard, Chesapeake Bay Magazine and SpinSheet about living with her husband, Mark, aboard a sailboat for eight years—although from talking with her I know that she and Mark both got seasick the first time they sailed. When you next visit the “Charm City” of Baltimore, if you treat yourself to a visit aboard the sailing ambassador, the Pride of Baltimore II, know that Carolyn was among the volunteers who worked over a recent winter to keep the swift clipper shipshape. And she is a reviewer, editor, and member of the editorial board of the Washington Independent Review of Books. (Continue Reading)
9/17/13 — INTERVIEW WITH NANCY HARTNEY, AUTHOR OF WASHED IN THE WATER 
In my review of Washed in the Water earlier this month, I suggested this debut collection of short stories made Nancy Hartney an important new voice of the South. That was very much on my mind when I got a chance to talk to Hartney about her roots, how her upbringing influenced her writing, and how she feels about the region she grew up in. Here is our interview, slightly edited and condensed:
9/10/13 – INTERVIEW WITH AMY FRANKLIN-WILLIS, AUTHOR OF THE LOST SAINTS OF TENNESSEE
When Amy Franklin-Willis’s debut novel, The Lost Saints of Tennessee, w
as released, The New York Times Book Review noted “the main characters are agreeably imperfect, their stories sensitively told.” The Christian Science Monitor said, “…she excels at making readers care about her characters, especially the ones who have made the biggest mistakes.”
I couldn’t agree more that characters are the soul of The Lost Saints of Tennessee, although the sense of place is powerful, too. (Continue Reading)
9/1/13 Austin Camacho interviewed by Sonia Linebaugh. What does the writer experience as the words flow onto the page? That’s what I wanted to find out when I interviewed Austin Camacho, author of five detective novels and four thrillers.
Q. Austin, what are your moments of ecstasy in writing?
A. There’s a kind of ecstatic moment when I find just the right line of dialog to express what a character needs to say, or write a bit of description that tugs at my heart when I read it the next day. In Damaged Goods [page 81], Hannibal asks the slave girl where her collar is: “For a frozen moment, (Continue Reading)
9/1/13 – THE BOOKS I MISSED READING LAST YEAR
I’ve been so submerged in the process of writing a new novel that I’ve missed pretty much every one of my monthly book club meetings over the past year—and, alas, many of the books that went with them. When I finally came up for air, I found myself gasping for fresh reading material, and I figured the ladies of my longstanding book club could rescue me. (Continue Reading)
9/1/13 –INTERVIEW WITH ROB ROSS, AUTHOR OF JUGGLER’S BLADE
Rob Ross’s fantasy novel, Juggler’s Blade, was published during summer. I’ll review it on the 20th of the month on this site. Meantime I met the author for coffee in downtown Washington to ask him about his writing roots and about his reading taste. I find one of the best ways to discover good books to read is to ask authors of books I like what they recommend. (Continue Reading)
9/1/13 — TALKING ABOUT BOOKS WITH THE WASHINGTON POST‘S RON CHARLES
Next time you feel overwhelmed by the number of books on your to-read list, think of Ron Charles, the fiction editor at the Washington Post. Charles and his colleagues at the newspaper get 150 books a day to choose from, with a lot careers depending on their decisions. I chatted with Ron recently about his job and how he approaches it. Here is the transcript of our phone conversation, edited and condensed.