by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Jul 20, 2010 | first novels, mfa, reviews |
Robin Oliveira was a graduate assistant during my first residency at Vermont College. I met her only months before her first book would be published by Viking. Mary Sutter is a midwife, and what she wants is clearly stated in dialogue in the first chapter: “I want to...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Apr 9, 2010 | first novels, my writing, reviews |
The new issue of Contrary Magazine is online with my review of Kim Wright’s first novel, Love in Mid Air. Here’s the first paragraph of the review: As a plane heads down a runway, a stranger reaches for the Narrator’s hand. “Here comes the dangerous part,”...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Jan 11, 2010 | first novels, my writing, reviews |
An Equal Stillness, the debut novel by Francesca Kay, who grew up in South-east Asia and India and now lives in Oxford, was one of the best books I read in 2009. My review of this book is now online in Contrary Magazine’s Winter Issue. An Equal Stillness also...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Jul 15, 2009 | craft of writing, details, reviews |
When Mari Strachan was a little girl, she used to create pretend newspapers, carefully writing the stories in pencil, drawing a picture to go with them, and then sewing the pages together. She says, “I’ve always loved the physicality of books and paper and...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Jul 13, 2009 | craft of writing, details, memoir, memory, reviews, shapes |
I don’t write memoir. But I like the way Abigail Thomas writes, the way she tells the truth. “My truth doesn’t travel in a straight line, it zigzags, detours, doubles back. Most truths I have to learn over and over again.” I got hooked on the...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Jul 1, 2009 | craft of writing, essays, reviews |
The Writer’s Notebook, with its title taken from the journals of Somerset Maugham, consists of 17 essays on the craft of writing. Some, but not all, are based on craft seminars given at the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop. I did not read them in order, but...
