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Libraries Under Fire: Lessons From the Front Lines of Book Bans

Author: Laura Resnick

Libraries Under Fire: Lessons From the Front Lines of Book Bans

In 2002, I was a second-year English teacher in a struggling northern Ohio town. Poverty was rampant, and investment in education was inconsistent. That year, 15 percent of my students were parents; of the 88 counties in Ohio, our county had the highest teen pregnancy rate. My job? To get seniors to read and write at a level that would boost job opportunities—and occasionally, college acceptance. That year, our English department adopted several titles, including Mark Mathabane’s apartheid memoir...

banning, bans, book bans, books, libraries, reading

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Red Herrings & Plot Details: How to Keep Track of Them & Not Leave Them Hanging

In fiction, the term “red herring” is a technique designed to distract the reader by introducing misleading information. It’s a false clue, meant to deceive, before the truth is revealed. Take a look at your latest story. Have all your plot twists been resolved? Do you have any red herring plot threads that you overlooked? There’s nothing more frustrating than finishing your book, tweaking every subplot, only to have your readers ask about a plot thread you’d forgotten about. Oops! How can you...

craft, editor advice, genre, organization, self-editing, Tools, tutorials, Writing

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Understanding and Fighting Back Against Harassment

In 2013, a big-name editor at a major sf/f publishing house lost his job after multiple reported incidents of sexual harassment. Among the reports and stories shared around this time was an author who reported that after she signed with this publisher, other writers had quietly warned her about this editor. She’d signed with them in 2002. In other words, this editor’s harassment wasn’t a one-time thing. It wasn’t an isolated incident. It was an ongoing problem for more than a decade. Unfortunately,...

DEI, gaslighting, harrassment, Publishing

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Using Names to Develop Characters

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, By any other word would smell as sweet.” —Juliet The naming of our characters runs the gamut. Our characters are “ours” and character names provide opportunities for authors to expand the emotion, impact, and resonance of their stories. Or as Elizabeth Ann West, author of 25 books and a digital publishing professional for over a decade said, “A name is a shorthand code readers have to talk about the character. That code is a big factor determining...

characterization, craft, Writing

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Resting the Right Way

With a title like Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less, how could I not be intrigued? This book by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang explores how counterproductive overwork is, how we think about rest and how we should think about it. What is rest? When you hear the word “rest,” what comes to mind? A nap? Eight hours of sleep a night? A nice vacation? All of those are indeed rest, but according to Pang it goes well beyond that. In some countries, including the United States, overwork has been normalized....

change, creativity, mental health, self care, writer psychology, Writing

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Affiliate Marketing: A Starter Guide to Creating Passive Income

Do you like easy money? Yes! Then you need to set up your affiliate marketing links. What is affiliate marketing? If you read the informational pamphlets for each affiliate site, they are full of jargon—performance-based channels, leveraged partnerships, pay-for-outcome alternatives—that is confusing and hard to decipher. But the basic answer is you get paid when you refer a reader to a vendor (i.e. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and Google) and they buy something on the website. In...

business, Distributors, organization, Tools

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