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Carl Douglass School on a shoestring, a hope, a prayer, and a boarding house.
“Our second daughter was born shortly before Karl got accepted into pre-medicine at the University of Utah, which was then …
Evan Swensen Writing in the Dark
The biggest mistake an author can make isn’t a weak opening line or a sagging middle—it’s waiting until the book …
Evan Swensen The Gift That Changed Literature
Have you ever received a Christmas gift that changed your life? Maybe it was a childhood bicycle, a book that …
Evan Swensen The Power of Criticism
“It is, I think, as clear as daylight that literature can only be kept alive by criticism.” Henry James, a …
Carl Douglass HOW TO WRITE WITH ACCENTS, DIALECT, SLANG, COLLOQUALISM, AND ETHNICITY
PART XI How to speak British beyond England, course 301 For the sake of completeness and for brevity, we will …
Evan Swensen The Art of Letting Readers See
There’s an old saying in writing circles—probably scrawled on a thousand sticky notes across the desks of aspiring authors—that commands, …
Evan Swensen The Novel That Never Used ‘E’
Some people run marathons. Others climb mountains. But in 1939, one man decided to challenge himself in an entirely different …
Evan Swensen The Wordsmith’s Drug
Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” – Rudyard Kipling Language is no mere tool. It hypnotizes, …
Carl Douglass A unique honeymoon, and the start of the Great Depression
“We had to go to Salt Lake City to get married which was a long ways from the mining camp …
Evan Swensen Writing the Right Book for the Right Readers
There’s a moment every writer faces—when the words are flowing, the pages are stacking up, and then it hits—that nagging …
Evan Swensen A Ban Worthy of the Queen of Hearts
Imagine waking up one day and finding out that a whimsical tale about a girl chasing a white rabbit was …
Evan Swensen The Peril and Power of Words
“Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little …