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Welcome to Author, an on-line magazine for writers and readers, featuring interviews with best-selling and first-time authors, reviews, articles, and more.			Sign up for Author's Mailing List Author will not share your email address.
	Jodi Picoult Audio Interview The author of Change of Heart	Editor's Blog by Bill Kenower
	(Click image to hear interview.) For more author interviews, please visit our interviews section.	When I was a freshman in high school, a Great Poet visited my creative writing class. I knew he was a Great Poet because a friend of mine who was two years older than I and who could already grow a beard and who had taken third place in a national poetry contest told me he was, and because this Great Poet had published a poem in Rolling Stone—or had published a poem that had been mentioned in Rolling Stone. Either way, the man, as far as I was concerned, had cred. At fourteen, I had already made up my mind that I wanted to be a writer. My plan was to write big swords-and-sorcery epics like all the big swords-and-sorcery epics I had read since my grandmother handed me a copy of The Hobbit the summer after I turned twelve. The Great Poet did not like swords-and-sorcery epics. It was not his fault, he just didn’t, but I sensed right away that my taste in literature was a strike against me. more...


Dispatches From The Publishing Front A Day in the Life of a New York Editor by Erin Brown
7:15 am, 20 feet below Fifth Avenue: I hold tightly to the grimy subway pole with one hand, while flipping the pages of a particularly colossal manuscript with the other. As I struggle to retain the yoga-like triangular balance pose that I have mastered after a decade of riding trains in the City, the smell of the shower-challenged man next to me overwhelms the aroma of my café-mocha-latte-chino. In an instant, the train lurches to a halt and the car goes black. I stand in the dark, feeling the pages of the manuscript flutter to the ground, where they await retrieval amongst unidentifiable—and sticky—substances on the subway floor. Shower-Challenged inches closer to me. 8:04 am, 17^th Floor, Midtown Manhattan: I flop into my chair with a sigh. A huge yellow Post It is stuck to my computer screen. “See me asap. Signed, [Mr. Boss Guy]*.” I quickly grab a pad and pen and run down to his office. The big cheese swivels around in his chair. “I just hung up with [Big Agent #3]. Are we going to bid on this China manuscript she’s talking about?” more...


Book Reviews		Articles

Editor's Pick: Wild Nights reviewed by Paige Byerly		Using a Laser Instead of a Shotgun by Katherine Pryor
		Using a Laser Instead of a Shotgun by Katherine Pryor
In Wild Nights, Joyce Carol Oates’ latest story collection, five iconic American authors wrestle with dwindling creativity, sexual perversions and their own humanity as they face their last days. Fictionalizations of famous authors are ubiquitous these days, and are all too frequently transparent (and often embarrassing) attempts to ride to fame on the coattails of geniuses. In Wild Nights, however, Oates uses the authors’ factual lives and works only as launch pads for her own inventions, which are fiercely original and frequently disquieting. more...		This all started over a power lunch a few months ago. Sitting across a linen-draped table from the owner and editor of a Seattle publishing company, I found myself trying to pin down the target market for my two unpublished novels. “Well, they’re contemporary women’s fiction….Except this last one, which guys would probably like, too….People who like books? Yeah, that’s my target market,” I stammered. He raised a thick silver eyebrow. “What’s wrong with contemporary women’s fiction?” I asked. “Girl,” he sighed, “you’re using a shotgun when you need to be using a laser.” more...