I always tell my writing students that today is an exciting time to be an author interested in both genre and literary fiction. That the barrier between the two is dissolving, that readers care little about labels, that even the Pulitzers and National Book Awards have genre works among the finalists, and that authors like Kelly Link or Carmen Maria Machado or Ted Chiang or Jeff VanderMeer can build readerships in both fields. And all that’s true. But at the same time, the literary and genre worlds remain in some ways very separate.

I used to be absolutely terrified of zombies. I avoided any zombie story like the plague (lol get it). But in 2013, I had an emergency C-section with my oldest daughter, Aryn. After thirty hours of labor, a sweet, bespectacled doctor leaned down and brushed my sweaty hair out of my face and told me […]

As part of a deal I made with myself to improve my writing this year, I decided to commit to studying bestselling novels all year long. Why? Because Debbie Macomber once recommended this to me while we were both at a festival dinner. She seemed so certain it helps. I was grilling her relentlessly about […]

First published in The Masters Review “I don’t believe a teenager would think this.” This is a critique I’ve heard often while writing my YA novel, a story about a teenage girl who goes to live with her father in Sioux Falls one summer; when she arrives, she finds he’s left town. Rather than calling […]