In October 2025, my dear friend Lisa Groen’s new historical fiction book, The Cassatt Sisters: A Novel of Love and Art, will be coming out. Midwest Book Review says it is “hard to put down, intensely revealing, and a work of art itself.” Lisa paints a dazzling picture of Belle Époque Paris and the extraordinary life of artist Mary Cassatt during her time with the Impressionists.

Writer and poet Virginia Watts reflects on the stories that shaped her and the places that inspire her work. She shares favorite reads, writing insights, and the power of everyday moments in both fiction and poetry.

I first met Gabby through the Old Scratch Press Short Form Collective, of which we are both founding members. I love when writers, such as Gabby, write across the genres. In Gabby’s case, she writes everything from horror to magical realism to poetry, and all with skill.

What do you do when your creativity is not confined to poetry, but includes prose, recipes, and memoir as well? You publish a hybrid collection that includes all of the above, as writer Nadja Maril has done! Let’s pop open the lid of this creative mind and peek inside.

When I struggle to find the right words—when my thoughts feel like a tangled ball of yarn—found poetry helps me unravel them. Whether through blackout poetry, erasure, or piecing together lines from old letters and newspapers, it’s a playful and meditative way to reconnect with language and rediscover creativity.

I’ve shared before that after a two-year stop-and-start with my cozy mystery book, I finally put the pedal to the metal this summer and finished the first draft. It doesn’t matter how many Agatha Christie books you’ve read, or dense texts about how to write a mystery, it’s daunting to jump into another entirely different genre of writing.

Creative blocks can be frustrating, but they’re a normal part of the creative process. Here, I explore 3 common types of creative blocks that I experience on a regular basis and share my strategies to overcome them and get back into your creative flow.

When I first considered writing a mystery novel, I followed my time-worn inclinations to learn and research everything in print or online. Of course, that was an impossible task and one fantastic basis for procrastination. When I returned to the novel almost two years later, I approached it entirely differently.

It’s not often that a girl gets married in June, then published in the New York Times in July, but that’s exactly what happened to my gorgeous new daughter-in-law, Christene Seda (Chris)! Here, I share her essay, “Psychic Who Predicted my Romantic Future”, with you, along with my interview.

I recently interviewed Morgan Golladay, a writer and artist who published her first book, The Song of North Mountain, in May. The path of a person coming fully into their creative life at a later age is rarely linear and usually filled with interesting stories. Morgan is no exception.

I think ethics are worth considering whenever we write about someone other than ourselves, whether it is memoir, poem, or blogpost. This topic of “ethics in memoir” invites a wide range of opinions, so you must discern what works best for you.

As writers we naturally mine the depth of our own lives, both internal and external, for subject matter. Writing through your life experiences, trauma, or buried memories is often tough.

Could we be open to the idea that the murky area lurking just below the conscious mind is wiser than the logical, planner-infested mind?

Port-man-teau: A large trunk or suitcase, typically made of stiff leather or a word blending the sounds and combining the meanings of others, for example “bewilderness”.

We all find our preferred modes of expression, from tattoos to topiary artists. While they may seem totally different from the outside, they share a most important end result for me: the ability to communicate both with myself and with the outside world.

I crave the kind of solitude that can only be found in the quiet that invites my thoughts to marinate and my nervous system to ratchet down a few notches.