I’m pleased to announce the publication of A Place Called WriterL: Where the Conversation Was Always About Literary Journalism.

For those of you who don’t know, my wife – mystery writer Lynn Franklin – and I created this online forum for writers of literary journalism. This was back in 1994, the early days of the internet, when anything seemed possible.

To our delight, hundreds of award-winning journalists, freelancers, editors, educators and fiction writers from around the world joined WriterL. Our goal: to share our thoughts and insights about the craft of writing in general and literary journalism in particular.

The lively discussions ranged from using the psychological interview to getting into the heads of nonfiction characters to using first person in nonfiction to increasing the power of stories through rhythm.

The New York Times compared WriterL to “Paris of the 1920s” and called it one of the safest, most civilized places on the internet.

Unfortunately, WriterL closed shop in 2009. Its important discussions might have been lost to the public forever.

But in 2021, Pulitzer-winning editor Stuart Warner, a WriterL member, discovered dozens of our old posts at the bottom of his email basket. From there, Stuart worked with us to reconstruct 16 dialogues from the digital vaults of WriterL. The result is A Place Called WriterL

I am grateful to Stuart for all of his hard work in creating this collection of WriterL’s most valuable discussions. This was a huge undertaking. He presents the conversations as if several writers are sitting around a café table with either Lynn or myself leading the discussions.

I think both nonfiction and fiction writers will find something helpful in the conversations. If you’ve ever longed to listen to writers debating (often heatedly) the techniques they use, please give this book a try.

Click here to learn more.

https://books2read.com/u/md6EAw