Saturday Saturday Saturday at Saints and Sinners Festival! These six readers + five surprise guests (names drop tomorrow 💅) + ten open mic spots = one hell of a party, y’all! We’ll see you at The Hotel Monteleone, top floor, at 8pm 😎
Kicked off the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference (AWP) with this fabulous panel moderated by author Sara Lippman: “Debuting after Fifty.” As a late bloomer myself—having just officially made the transition from writer to author a few months ago—I loved hearing these brilliant writers (@scribblepost , @melaniefaranello , @nitanoveno , and @zeevabukai ) talk about what they’ve gained with age as writers. In the words of Chin-Sun Lee, “The other thing age has afforded me is life experience–and a shit ton of stories.”
Other highlights of the AWP conference: Getting to spend time IRL (in real life) with writing friend @tracytrlynchwrites who I met as part of an international writing group that started during COVID—and who, though, I see her every week virtually—I had only met once in person before this weekend; hanging at the @woodhallpress table at the amazing AWP Bookfair; meeting publishing guru @janefriedman , who I’ve taken countless webinars with, in the flesh; and attending a keynote by the iconic John Waters.
#theaccident #yathriller #awp26 #debutauthor
My AWP avalanche.
An offsite reading the first night, then a packed “Debuting After Fifty” panel the next morning—so full we had to turn people away. A warm, generous crowd and a conversation I won’t forget. 🌟
My favorite conference pastime—How Many Familiar Faces at the Book Fair?—did not disappoint. (Answer: many, happily.) And connecting in person with the incredible team of my beautiful press, Red Hen Press. 🎈
Reunions at the conference hotel bar (um, the slowest service in Charm City?), and on Friday at The Back Yard for an outdoor reading and more community (with stunning flock of crows overhead—very Poe). 🐦⬛
An irreverent and beloved John Waters keynote, powerful panels on Mississippi Delta literature and memoir and autobiographical writing (with Natasha Trethewey and Lucy Sante), and lots of hanging out with writer friends, new and old, each one gold. 💛
A whirlwind in Baltimore. Grateful to have been part of it.
Dang, why does IG limit tags to 20? Pics of untagged beautiful faces belong to: the readers & hosts including @wil_to_win at the recent offsite @sundaysalonnyc & @writlargeprojects , @anastaciarenee5@brooklyncynthia , @browngirlbooklover@mrheeloy 💕💕💕
Thanks for the panel group photo @jiminhanwriter & at the John Waters podium @bengarciapoet 🧡
I am very exhausted lol but happy to check attending my first @awpwriter off my writer's bucket list. Maybe it's a foolish hopefulness, but seeing so many old and new friends continuing to write and share very necessary stories while the world is on fire was just so healing. And of course, lifting each other up as we do so. Now the next three days will be spent decompressing and replenishing my social battery. 😅 Luckily, my heart and cup are so so full. ❤️
We are so excited to bring @scribblepost ’s newest novel to you in spring 2027!
“Look, beauty is an advantage—just like talent and intelligence. No one objects to improving those assets, so why all the hate over this one?”
As the #OwnIt movement and their #AsIs opponents present two factions of feminism in a near-future, dystopic LA, young Korean-American investigative journalist Lily Han chooses to undergo extensive plastic surgery to advance her career and secure her safety in a nation subject to deportations for Deficients and Insecures. The influx of surgeons from Seoul to LA’s Koreatown make her significant transformation possible, and as Lily gains inside experience of the pleasures and horrors of what it means to homogenize beauty, the #AsIs movement’s growing radical activism threatens everyone, Lily included. And she learns that certain secrets at the moneyed hearts of the beauty industry may have signed her on for more than she bargained for—and more than her body can possibly handle.
Chin-Sun Lee’s SOON YOU’LL BE JUST LIKE US, a horror-thriller with sci-fi elements, serves as a nuanced challenge to the homogenization of Korean beauty standards, set against a nation in political turmoil and subject to intense surveillance.
💜☔️Purple Rain- a spiritual, apocalyptic cleansing- blood in the sky (red) + sorrow (blue) resulting in a transformative, peaceful state; finding peace, love, + faith during chaotic times; letting go of pain☔️💜 #mardigras2026 #stannesparade #purplerain #skullandbonesgang #blessingthestreets
Don’t keep quiet about this one: the remarkable @scribblepost returns with a one day seminar on dialogue writing called Voices Carry: Crafting Effective Dialogue. Chin-Sun will lead you in a craft discussion citing examples from contemporary works that address: dialogue vs. exposition; deciding who gets to speak; dialogue that feels truthful to your characters; naturalistic dialogue; internal dialogue; dialogue as indicator of mood; dialogue tags and formatting; and finally, when and how to break the rules. After the theory, it will be time for practice, with an in-class writing exercise and the option to share for feedback. This one is for writers of all levels and genres interested in improving their dialogue on the page!
After last fall’s Prose from Imagery class, one student gushed “Fantastic 2-hour seminar! Chin-Sun’s pacing, presence, great examples, and potent exercise all worked together synergistically and effectively. Wow! Thank you, Chin-Sun!”
Find out more and enroll on the classes page of our website.
Q3 / 2025 / In which it feels strange to give a summary or update, as time has swelled and contracted so, but also time goes on, so here we go…
A head not quite on straight, a home for the future with remnants of friends, a bottling of a season past. Perfect mornings and perfect evenings and the past/present/future perfect. A dog as a cat, a hat I will never wear (never say never), gazpacho. The home has been built, the building explodes light, the past/present/future perfect. Ada gifts, @fava_onvine gifts, @phantomlobstah gifts, the past/present/future perfect. Moments of quiet, moments of grief, moments of relief. The past/present/future perfect.
Thanks to @electricliterature for letting me write this Reading List, my most fun pre-debut-pub assignment. Featuring some of my favorite genre-bending authors. These reads are perfect for October … and beyond 😈 👭 👻🪆
“Like many new writers, I fell into the trap of believing that serious literature meant realist literature. I toiled away for years, trying my best to write in a style that doesn’t suit me, until one pivotal class at the 2018 Kenyon Review Writers Workshop when Caitlin Horrocks assigned Karen Russell’s 'Engineering Impossible Architectures' and Carmen Maria Machado’s 'The Husband Stitch.' Russell’s is a craft essay that introduces the “Kansas:Oz Ratio” to guide a writer in effectively juxtaposing realistic (Kansas) and fantastic (Oz) details; Machado’s is a short story that’s more astonishing with each read. What struck me most was how these and other genre-bending authors tackled very human subjects—family, relationships, mental health, motherhood, growing up, belonging—and used some sort of presence to heighten the effect. Introducing speculative elements into fiction such as devils, demons, dogs, doppelgängers, or any number of non-human or superhuman entities is a great technique for underpinning characters’ psychological states, flaws, and behaviors. It’s also a strategy that can be used to reach toward the inarticulable messiness of the human condition. Each of us contains entire worlds—how do we contend with a truth that large?”
Swipe to see the featured titles, then head to the 💡link in our bio💡 to read “Sister Creatures” author Laura Venita Green’s recommendations for novels and stories that use eerie entities and speculative ideas to articulate deeply human truths.
