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Sunday

Susan Warren

Revealing Characters: How to Make Dull People Sparkle

It's natural to bury yourself in the research for your nonfiction work. Gathering facts is the easy part. But to tell a great story, you need people. And people - especially living ones - don't always cooperate. Even scarier, sometimes the people you need most are
inarticulate stiffs. They're intimidated or offended by your questions; suspicious of your motives, or frightened by your intentions. They clam up.  Disaster? Not really. This is where a writer draws on intuition, observation and empathy. Susan Warren, with 25 years of experience coaxing reluctant sources to reveal intimate details, shows why the most interesting part of any person isn't found in what they say. In her nonfiction book, Backyard Giants, Ms. Warren confronted a group of people most of the world viewed as cartoons: grown men and women obsessed with growing giant pumpkins. So how do you get inside the head of a shy, middle-aged radio technician, living in the same house where he was born, tending his garden alongside the ghost of his father? How do you handle a cocky electrician, boasting and charming his way into the center of attention, while sabotaging anyone in his path? And what do you make of an old man with bum knees who moons people on the highway, and postpones his own dreams to help a son achieve his? Through these experiences and more, Ms. Warren discovered that the supreme test of a writer is their ability to take life's odd characters and reveal them as real people anyone can understand.

Gordon Grice

Once Bitten: Lessons from the Deadly Kingdom

Gordon Grice has been bitten or stung by more than 100 kinds of bugs, wrapped up in pythons, and stalked by mountain lions. He’s been hassled by everything from South American rheas to barnyard pigs. He brought most of it on himself. He’s a nature lover without illusions. And he’s here to tell you that the most dangerous animal for the nature writer is the human being. It comes in several forms: The biologist who hates to give up his priestly monopoly on the truth. The Disney-fied cuddler who’s ready to explain everything away. The editor with a venomous agenda. And the writer himself, whose preconceptions can get him killed—or, worse, ruin the story.

Michael W. Kauffman

Living History: Rowing, Jumping, and Sleeping through the Lincoln Conspiracy

Growing up in “Civil War country” gave Michael W. Kauffman a passion for the past – not just reading about it, but following it around. For him, nothing on the printed page could really match the experience of locating the scene of a crime, solving an age-old mystery, or pulling a long-lost relic out of a dense patch of undergrowth. This kind of history was felt rather than studied, and for more than three decades it led Kauffman over half a continent in search of a new angle on John Wilkes Booth, the man who killed Abraham Lincoln. The trip was never dull. Sorting through mountains of government files, Kauffman designed a database to bring out even the smallest details of Booth’s life and crime. He traced the assassin’s flight through the swamps and thickets of rural Maryland. He leaped to the stage at Ford’s Theatre, rowed across the Potomac, and found dozens of “souvenirs” of Booth’s escape tucked away in sheds and attics. For a while, he even lived in Booth’s house. The experience gave him an even deeper conviction that the past can still come alive for anyone who doesn’t mind getting out on the road.

John Parsley

From Proposal to Publication: Publishing What Matters

In today’s publishing climate, what are nonfiction editors looking for in a book project? Though publishers’ lists seem to be shrinking, it seems that there’s more going on (and more to write about) than ever, so what are the keys to writing and publishing a book that will matter to an agent, an editor, sales reps, marketing departments, publicists, and ultimately readers? John Parsley, a senior editor at Little, Brown and Company, will discuss smart ways to choose a subject, what editors are really thinking when they read proposals and how they make decisions, and how nonfiction projects go from proposal to publication by rising above their competition, garnering support, gathering an audience, and finding homes on the bookstore shelves. With so much going on in the world, many writers and journalists are tempted to write quick books that tie-in to the evening news—but that path can lead to a book that dates quickly and loses its voice in the crowd. From the very first book, growing as a nonfiction writer ultimately comes down to writing what matters.

Alma Guillermoprieto

Dancing With Cuba