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The Writer’s Chronicle: “Writerly Fingerprints: Syntax as Style”
By virtue of the relative clarity with which they develop ideas and map out logical relationships in a pleasing ebb-and-flow movement, cumulative sentences abound in fiction.
Since we writers enjoy unique and multifarious rhythmic experiences, it is crucial for us to understand how syntax can help change the pace of our sentences, accelerating, interrupting, or retarding them, “using variations in sound to create differing emphasis.” Different types of sentences achieve different stylistic and emotional effects. Read more…
The Tishman Review: “Poking a Stick in the Eye of Silence: An Interview with Martha Cooley”
Volume 3/Issue 4, October 2017, pp. 137–142
Martha Cooley is a long-standing member of PEN America, a contributing editor for A Public Space, a professor of English at Adelphi University, and the author of The Archivist, Thirty-Three Swoons, and most recently the memoir, Guesswork: A Reckoning with Loss. Begun as a journal, her memoir in essays takes place primarily in Castiglione del Terrier, a small Italian town in the Lunigiana region where Martha repairs with her husband, Antonia Romani, to write and work on co-translating Antonio Tabucchi into English. Read more…
From the Blog
Parallel Stories in Picture Books
After choosing the setting of a hay maze for Sophia and Sinclair Get Lost!, I knew that Sophia, a tireless rabbit, and her best friend, Sinclair, a thoughtful turtle, would argue and go their separate ways. This meant that I would be telling two separate narratives. Readers would need to track each character’s journey and, hopefully, enjoy them both. In other words, I would need to use parallel stories. But how exactly would I accomplish... Read more ❯
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