Are you wondering what the financial realities are for writers? Are you on the fence about MFA programs? Are you facing a creative block? Get ready for this motivating conversation featuring today’s special guest Nova Ren Suma.
Nova is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling The Walls Around Us, which was an Edgar Award finalist. She also wrote Imaginary Girls and 17 & Gone and is co-creator of FORESHADOW: A Serial YA Anthology. Her newest novel, “A Room Away from the Wolves” releases September 4th.
Nova’s episode is motivating to the core, we discuss anything and everything from finances as an artist, relationships, and writing through creative blocks, to advice about applying for MFA programs, artist residencies, literary agents, and so much more.
Books & Resources Mentioned in Nova’s Episode:
Vermont College of Fine Arts (VCFA) MFA in Writing for Children & Young Adults
Djerassi Resident Artists Program
Emily X.R. Pan author of “The Astonishing Color of After” (Click here to listen to Emily’s 88 Cups of Tea episode!)
Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life by Dani Shapiro
Check out these highlights:
- Find out the one thing that gives Nova a sense of calm within her author life
- All about MFA schools through her experiences and perspective
- The one advice Nova would share with writers who are curious about applying for MFA programs
- Real talk about the financial circumstances of writers with student loans
- The realities of being an artist and making money
- We discuss what it’s like being an artist in a relationship and balancing your passions along with your partner’s
- We go into all the exciting details about “A Room Away from the Wolves” from idea to the process of writing the novel and more
- Getting lost in the forest of creative blocks and how to pull yourself out of the dark
- Different ways to find a writing partner
- How to select the right literary agent for you
- Listener questions featured:
- I’d love to hear more about her work at Vermont; and particularly, if/how teaching craft has influenced her own writing style and her philosophy as a writer.
- How did she find an agent, and what does she value most in her relationship with hers? What does she know now about structuring a novel that writing her last book taught her?
- Would love to know more about Foreshadow, her amazing project with Emily X.R. Pan!
- Has the rise of the internet and general connectedness made it easier to be “in” the publishing community without being in its hub (NYC)? As someone who also just left NYC for less-concrete pastures, I’d love to know her opinion!
“All the missteps of not knowing what I should write for years, all of that led to me finding my voice and writing the novels I feel like I was meant to write. So I guess I can’t take any of it back, even if I have some regrets, they were worthy of going through.”
-Nova Ren Suma
“It really, really helped me when I was lost in my forest to try and talk through the steps of where I thought this particular scene or thread of the novel was going, and face when it wasn’t working. I usually am someone who’s very private about my writing and my stories and I don’t like to talk it through. I fought and fought, and then I realized there comes a time when, even if that person is just listening, you really need someone on the other side of that.”
-Nova Ren Suma
“It’s not about the one book, it’s about carrying through and telling my stories and that my books would connect with each other over the voice.”
-Nova Ren Suma
Say ‘Hi’ to Nova Ren Suma!
Learn More About “A Room Away from the Wolves”
Bina has never forgotten the time she and her mother ran away from home. Her mother promised they would hitchhike to the city to escape Bina’s cruel father and start over. But before they could even leave town, Bina had a new stepfather and two new stepsisters, and a humming sense of betrayal pulling apart the bond with her mother—a bond Bina thought was unbreakable.
Eight years later, after too many lies and with trouble on her heels, Bina finds herself on the side of the road again, the city of her dreams calling for her. She has an old suitcase, a fresh black eye, and a room waiting for her at Catherine House, a young women’s residence in Greenwich Village with a tragic history, a vow of confidentiality, and dark, magical secrets. There, Bina is drawn to her enigmatic downstairs neighbor Monet, a girl who is equal parts intriguing and dangerous. As Bina’s lease begins to run out, and nightmare and memory get tangled, she will be forced to face the terrible truth of why she’s come to Catherine House and what it will cost for her to leave . . .
In A Room Away from the Wolves, critically acclaimed and New York Times bestselling author Nova Ren Suma weaves a spellbinding ghost story about who deserves a second chance, how we lie to those around us and ourselves, and what lengths girls will go to in order to save each other.
Learn More About Nova Ren Suma
Nova Ren Suma is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling The Walls Around Us, which was an Edgar Award finalist. She also wrote Imaginary Girls and 17 & Gone and is co-creator of FORESHADOW: A Serial YA Anthology. She has an MFA in fiction from Columbia University and teaches at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Originally from the Hudson Valley, she spent most of her adult life in New York City and now lives in Philadelphia.
