Kelly Sagert

Sol Stein penned his first story on telegram blanks, stolen from Western Union. “My father took them from Grand Central Station because we couldn’t afford paper in the depths of the Depression,” Stein said. His first poem was then published in a school paper when he was seven. “I wrote my first book when I was thirteen and it was published when I was fifteen,” he said. “When I went to see the publisher, he asked why my father didn’t come himself.” More than two million copies of Stein’s novels have now been sold. Selected by major book clubs, they’re

Aimee Thurlo got fired. Frequently. “In 1980, I was super restless at home,” she said, “but I couldn’t find any job that interested me. I got fired from every conceivable job on the planet, too, because I was constantly daydreaming.” “Finally,” she added, “unable to settle on any career that suited me, I decided to try my hand at writing and I cajoled my husband David into joining me.” 

For Tad Wojnicki to write well, he needs to know that he’s evoking a feeling, identifying with the reader at a gut level. “What are we talking about here?” Wojnicki asks. “We are talking passion! Without passion, which is the heart of writing, we merely have cold facts.” He has recently followed his own advice in his first novel, Lie Under the Fig Trees, which he calls a thinly disguised autobiography. He leads us through the romance of Teddy and Rosie, starting with a passionate one night stand in Poland the night before Teddy flees the oppressed country. Arriving in