DIY MFA Radio

Welcome to the first episode of DIY MFA Radio! I am so happy to share this creative adventure with you. This weekly podcast will offer tips and techniques that you can apply to your writing practice right now. In this episode, I will tell you just how and why I started DIY MFA, and how it can help you to write more, write better, write smarter. For show notes and more details, DIYMFA.com/001

In this episode I'll tell you why you want to build a writing practice, what this writing practice can look like and how to do it. For show notes and more details go to DIYMFA.com/002

Hey there word nerds!

Today I am delighted to have David Plante on the show!

David grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, within a French-Canadian parrish, much the same way as Jack Kerouac did in Lowell, Massachusetts, in an area which was known in the 17h century as La Nouvelle France. David has written several books rooted in La Nouvelle France, most notably in The Family, a contender for the National Book Award.

He then went on to live in London for fifty years where he wrote several memoirs including Becoming a Londoner and Worlds Apart. David is also the author of the nonfiction book Difficult Women which has recently been republished by The New York Review of Books Press, and has been a regular contributor to the New Yorker with short stories and profiles of people he knew.

David is calling in to the show today from his home in Lucca, Italy, to discuss his most recent novel American Stranger.

Listen in as we chat about the elements that went into crafting this novel, and how writing can give you a voice and identity belonging to only you.

Also, just a quick heads up if you have not yet read American Stranger. We got so excited talking about the book that we may have disclosed a few spoilers... so SPOILER ALERT!

• How he unboxed Franco-American culture through the eyes of an outsider.
• Why not having identity can actually be liberating, and can also help you find your writing voice.
• Crafting a timeless novel by grounding the story with details.
• The best way to deal with a bad review... (all authors get them!).
• Drawing inspiration from a writer’s day in Italy.

For more info and show notes: DIYMFA.com/192

Hey there word nerds!

Today’s show is our last episode of 2018 so Happy New Year everybody!

And this episode is an especially awesome one because it features three members of my awesome DIY MFA team. I am so excited to have DIY MFA columnists Melanie Marttila, Brenda Joyce Patterson, and Stacy Woodson on the show!

I also want to take a moment to mention that these three amazing women are only a tiny sample of the awesome members of DIY MFA. We currently have 21 members on our team, from columnists who contribute articles to people who work their magic maintaining our archives and helping to curate all the voices we feature on our site. So a big thank you to all the members of the team for another awesome year!

Now, let me introduce the three amazing ladies I’ll be chatting with in this interview.

Melanie Marttila is a certified corporate trainer by day and fantasy writer by night. She writes the DIY MFA column Speculations, which is all about science fiction and fantasy. Her own works of scifi and fantasy have appeared in several places such as Bastion Science Fiction Magazine and On Spec Magazine.

Brenda Joyce Patterson is a poet, writer, librarian, and lover of short writing forms. Her column at DIY MFA, Writing Small, focuses on the various different short forms of writing such as short stories, poetry, and essays. She is a mentee in the Association of Writers & Writing Programs' Writer to Writer Mentorship Program for Fall 2018—which is a very prestigious and selective mentoring program—and her poetry and flash fiction have been published in numerous literary magazines such as Vayavya. She has also had a travel essay published (along with works by Maya Angelou and Gwendolyn Brooks) in the anthology Go Girl: The Black Woman's Guide to Travel and Adventure.

Stacy Woodson writes crime fiction and is the columnist behind Hook, Line, and Dagger, which dives into all things thriller and mystery. She is a U.S. Army veteran and memories of her time in the military are a source of inspiration for her writing. Stacy is a Daphne du Maurier winner and a Killer Nashville Claymore finalist. She also has several short fiction pieces forthcoming in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Malice Domestic’s Mystery Most Edible, and Chesapeake Crimes: Invitation to Murder.

Didn’t I tell you my team was amazing?!?! But I’ll stop gushing and let you hear from these fabulous women themselves. So listen in as Melanie, Brenda, Stacy and I chat about the aspects of genre writing and give you a sneak peek at the behind-the-scenes of DIY MFA.

In this episode Melanie, Brenda, Stacy and I discuss:

• An inside look at the Speculations, Writing Small, and Hook, Line, and Dagger columns.
• The different conventions within genres and writing forms.
• Why reading with purpose in your genre is so important.
• Pitfalls to avoid when writing thriller, scifi/fantasy, and short forms.
• Book recommendations to help you dive into each of their genres.

For more info and show notes: DIYMFA.com/232

Today, I have the pleasure of interviewing Jessica Vitalis. We’ll be talking about voice, perspective, pacing and her books The Wolf’s Curse and The Rabbit’s Gift.

Jessica Vitalis is a Columbia MBA-wielding writer on a mission to write entertaining and thought-provoking literature. As an active volunteer in the kidlit community, she’s also passionate about using her privilege to lift up other voices. She founded Magic in the Middle, a series of free monthly recorded book talks, to help educators introduce young readers to new fantasy books. She was recently named a 2021 Canada Council of the Arts Grant Recipient and featured on CBCs Here and Now. Her first novel, The Wolf’s Curse, published in 2021, and a standalone companion novel, The Rabbit’s Gift, comes out October 25th.

You can find her on her website or follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

• Balancing multiple perspectives on the same events without boring your reader
• Weaving folklore, tradition, science, and spirituality into a middle grade story
• How to use footnotes and parentheticals without slowing your story’s pace

For more info and show notes: diymfa.com/433