I'm so pleased to host this month's Jewish Book Carnival. I find this graphic of Jewish book covers an ideal visual to accompany this must-review list of Jewish author interviews and news. Thank you Jewish Book World for putting it together! The Jewish Book Carnival is a monthly event where bloggers who blog about Jew...

One of the nicest things about participating in the Vancouver Jewish Book Festival (February 2020) was meeting other authors. One of the  authors I enjoyed meeting was Tommy Schnurmacher, a fellow Canadian and multi-talented author. Please welcome Tommy to gilagreenwrites! Tommy, thanks so much for joining me.  BIOTommy Schnurmacher is a ...

By Gila Green We live in a publishing world that not only craves categories; it demands them. These pigeonholes are like gasoline for the modern manuscript, which cannot even move through cyberspace to an agent's inbox without the fuel labeling supplies. For those who guide writers on query letters, one of our first lessons is to help authors defin...

 Fascinating article by Alison Flood of the Guardian. I've been wondering about the future of literature in light of Covid-19. There's a number of answers and approaches here, everything from stick to 2018 to jump to the future, but should you write one with or without a vaccine? This article explores various answers we are all struggling with...

  By Gila Green When I tell people I teach a virtual flash fiction course, I often get strange responses bordering on laughter. Isn't flash fiction just really short fiction? What's the point of taking a specific Flash class? No, flash is its own genre deserving of its own class and in my opinion, it's still underrated as a way to break into p...

 Prepare to Publish: the business of publication, a hands-on workshop for writers with complete or near-complete manuscripts ready for publication. Monday & Wednesday options starts last week of June Many authors invest all of their energy into their works and are so pre-occupied with writing and editing that by the time it comes to p...

AUTOFICTION WORKSHOP: Exploring Hybrid Writing by Gila Green START DATE: Sunday, July 5, 2020 END DATE: Sunday, August 16, 2020 DURATION: 6 weeks LOCATION: Zoom and email for assignments FEEDBACK: Instructor feedback and critique COURSE DESCRIPTION: What is autofiction? It's not memoir, fiction or personal essay, but might weave elements of tw...

I'm thrilled my young adult environmental novel No Entry was included in the 68 books posted on JewishBookWorld.org in April 2020.  

I have some great authors on the way to visit gilagreenwrites. Check back for interviews with more talented creatives including: Rajani LaRocca, popular children's author of award-winning books, memoirist Alia Volz, poet Susie Berg, debut author Shana Riter, YA author Liza Wiemer, and many more. I try to bring you a variety of author...

Fellow Authors: I was interviewed last night on Chat and Spin Radio via Skype and it was fun. These are short audio interviews (the Skype is just for you to see them, the audience cannot see you, so sorry, no full pajamas, but you can do pajama bottoms.) Chat and Spin are a nonprofit and they tell me their station has ...

by Gila Green I have never attended a Canadian creative writing program, so I cannot say with certainty that my distance from Ottawa, my hometown, allows me to mentally glide over to the 1980s version of the city, pecking at bits and inserting them into my fiction, squirreling away savory pieces for later use, because I don't know any other writing...

No Entry received a great recommendation and review from Australia's Voiceless: The animal protection Institute. It's an honor to be mentioned by such a relevant and crucial organization working tirelessly to save the planet.  No Entry by Gila Green  We adored the novel's setting as we're transported into a remote wildlife rescue centre i...

 I'll be chatting about my novels in two hours (10 pm. Israel time) on www.chatandspinradio.com Like their Facebook Page at www.facebook.com/chatandspin where you can win a £20 shopping voucher

by Melissa Klapper As a university history professor, I am often asked by my students how I first became interested in the study of the past.My answer is simple:reading.I was a voracious reader from a very young age and grew up in a home overflowing with books.And my very favorites, first as a child and then as a teenager, were books that brought h...

I had a lovely chat with small press publisher Christi Craig of Hidden Timber Books yesterday.  We talked a lot about the devastation of elephant poaching for all of us and why it was so important to me to get that message out there, how ironic it is that perhaps in today's Covid-19 world we can really understand how connected w...

Thanks to Chrissey Harrison for mentioning my suggestion to film an author read-aloud in her excellent post. Here she offers ten ways to promote your book and I have to agree with her number one suggestion, which is to write another book. Another book is your best marketing tool and you're a content creator after all. Check out the rest o...

By Gila Green The secret of getting ahead is getting started—Mark Twain Three deadlines coming up, dinner's not made, and you haven't even hit the grocery store yet? The short answer might be fast food or begging a colleague to take one of your assignments, but the long-term answer is to improve your efficiency. Here are eight tips to help you save...

This indirect or left-branching sentence builds tension and creates excitement because it slows down the pace of the story. by Gila Green Have you ever seen any of these comments in the margins of your work? Slow downUnevenLacks climaxFlat If you answered "yes," you should immediately browse through your writer's toolbox of literary devices for pac...

Are your notions about your birthplace outdated? By Gila Green Diction. Slang and other everyday words sneak into our vocabularies. If you don't live and write in the same language, it takes an extra effort to root foreign words out of your work, unless they're part of your story.Names. Many writers spend a great deal of time enhancing their work w...

What you need to work on in your writing isn't description it's imagery.  By Gila Green If you write fiction you've probably been told dozens of times to include vivid description, work on your description, and not to forget description. Likely, you've also been reminded not to overdo it on the description. Unfortunately, being told to in...

By Gila Green We live in a publishing world that not only craves categories; it demands them. These pigeonholes are like gasoline for the modern manuscript, which cannot even move through cyberspace to an agent's inbox without the fuel labeling supplies. For those who guide writers on query letters, one of our first lessons is to help authors defin...

 Join me on on May 17, 2020! Register for FREE for the small press author reading series. "In light of so many cancelled book tours as of late, Hidden Timber Books is hosting other small press authors via Zoom for readings. These events are FREE, all you need to do is register for the link to join. Attend one, attend them all, and spread the w...

 Thank you so much to Erin Khar for featuring my young adult, environmental novel No Entry in the latest issue of Ravishly.

For the last month, Heidi Rabinowitz's The Book of Podcast has had a special series called "Books in the Time of Coronavirus." Authors whose spring 2020 promotional events were cancelled were able to tell the world about their new Jewish books. I wish to thank Heidi once again for including No Entry and to repost her entire series here. E...

"There wasn't ever a time that I didn't want a career in showbusiness. I spent years wearing blinders, forbidding myself from thinking outside of the box." I'm excited to share with you my interview with Dani Alpert, an author and Pilates enthusiast, who is new to me and who I've only met virtually. I'm so pleased she reached out to share her ...

Reposting from Canadian Writers Abroad by Debra Martens  Back in March when Canadian travellers were urged to come home, I thought of the small community of Canadian writers living abroad. Would they stay or go? As Antony Millen in New Zealand puts it, "It was a very eerie feeling to hear Justin call Canadians home with such urgency. I admit, ...

I'm happy to share my newest author interview with you today. If you can believe it, Mel Rosenberg is originally from my hometown of Ottawa and I met him only this year but that's not the amazing part. It turns out that Mel's mother was my kindergarten teacher way back in the Old Days. How is that for small world? Indeed, one of my earliest me...

 Don't forget to vote for your favorite in the Crystal Kite Awards! These are so many wonderful works to choose from.  "The annual Crystal Kite Award is a peer-given award to recognize great books from 15 SCBWI regional divisions around the world." If you're eligible to vote, don't forget to do so, especially at this time when so man...

Today I want to wish a Happy Mimouna to those who celebrate! Though it was not the same as in past years, we still managed to celebrate a lockdown mimouna complete with homemade couscous, muflettot and Moroccan outfits straight from Morocco.  And thanks to Deborah Kalb for hosting the April Jewish Carnival:  At this difficu...

Thanks so much to Christina Hamlett for hosting me on her site. I virtually met Christina back in 2014 when I was looking for a new novel to write and decided to take her online course as a source of inspiration. The result was my novel A Prayer Apart (as yet unpublished, but working on it). I'm so happy to reconnect with her this week and to spend...