Craft on Draft

A WRITER’S VOICE – HOW TO DEVELOP YOURS AND YOUR CHARACTERS’

Voice. It’s what every agent and editor is looking for and what reels readers in. Join authors Belle Brett (Gina in the Floating World), Stephanie Gayle (Idyll Hands) and Brendan Mathews (The World of Tomorrow) discuss how they honed their characters’ voices as well as their own.

Want in on the action? Submit a page of your own voice-filled fiction (max 250 words). One lucky winner will have their entry read and discussed by the authors, receive a GrubStreet pint glass + drink, and have their piece and an interview published on the Dead Darlings blog. Email submissions to [email protected] by October 13.

Featured Authors

Belle Brett is a proud graduate of GrubStreet’s intensive Novel Incubator program. After a career in education as a teacher, career counselor, and evaluator of educational programs, she is now an artist and a writer, contributing to her own and others’ blogs and writing fiction that deals with coming of age across the life span. She holds a doctorate of education in human development and psychology from Harvard University. Her debut novel, Gina in the Floating World, was just published by She Writes Press. A lifelong traveler, in her twenties, after a six-month trip across Asia, Belle served as a bar hostess in a working-class Tokyo suburb, an experience that served as inspiration for her novel. She lives with her photographer husband in Somerville, Massachusetts.

Stephanie Gayle is the author of four novels including Idyll Threats, Idyll Fears, and Idyll Hands. Idyll Hands earned a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly, which read, “This series keeps getting better with each book.” Stephanie’s short fiction has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize. She lives in Arlington, MA and works at the MIT Media Lab doing financial work, which makes her a double-threat.

Brendan Mathews is the author of The World of Tomorrow (Little, Brown & Co.), named an Indie Next Pick and an Editors’ Choice by the New York Times Book Review. His stories have twice appeared in The Best American Short Stories, as well as in Virginia Quarterly Review, Glimmer Train, and other publications in the US and UK. He has received grants and scholarships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Sustainable Arts Foundation, Sewanee Writers Conference, and the University of Virginia, where he received his MFA. A former Fulbright Scholar to Ireland, he teaches at Bard College at Simon’s Rock.

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