NaNoWriMo Is Gone. What’s Next for Writers in November?
Every November for the past 20 years, writers flocked to the nonprofit National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) website, eager to take up the organization’s challenge: Write a 50,000-word novel during the month of November. November was dubbed National Novel Writing Month in 2000, as founder Chris Baty wanted to encourage writers to take advantage of […]
When Stories Save Us: Notes from the 2025 South Dakota Festival of Books
In a time of uncertainty—for journalism, for truth, even for funding the arts—stories endure because people keep showing up with curiosity, compassion, and commitment to telling them. That truth was on full display at the 2025 South Dakota Festival of Books, held September 26–28 in Spearfish. The South Dakota Humanities Council describes the festival as […]
Tracing a Community in Conversation (a personal essay celebrating my beloved hometown newspaper, which abruptly shut down on Aug. 6, 2025 – and then was brought back to life)
UPDATE: While my hometown newspaper, The Pinedale Roundup, was one of eight rural Wyoming newspapers to abruptly shut down on Aug. 6, it is now up and running again (along with the other 7 Wyoming newspapers), thanks to a pair of Wyoming-based newspaper executives who have stepped in with a renewed focus on hyper-local community news. I […]
Maybe Stories Do Matter: Some Writing Lessons from Kate DiCamillo
What Kate DiCamillo can teach us about writing – and life.
A Summer of Telling Our Life Stories
A couple of weeks ago, I hosted a webinar about telling life stories – what they are, why they matter, how to tell them. People came to the proverbial table at many points along their journey, with various motivations for pursuing their life stories: I have diaries from my mother from the 1930s through the […]
Telling Our Life Stories – a free webinar on May 13!
How many stories are out there, waiting to be captured? Have you ever heard a story from a family member and thought to yourself, someone needs to write that down! Or is there a story from your own life that you hope to tell … someday? Norman Vincent Peale wisely said, “If you put everything off […]
5 Unique Gift Ideas for the Creative Person in Your Life
Don’t settle for lackluster or impersonal gifts this year. Avoid the supply chain issues and the long lines at the post office and give the creative person in your life something they’ll really remember and cherish well beyond Christmas Day.