Interview: Nancy Holder

Nancy Holder will be the writer-in-residence at this summer’s Odyssey Writing Workshop. She is an award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of adult, young adult, middle grade, and early reader work, both fiction and nonfiction. She has sold approximately 80 novels and 200 short stories, comic books, and essays in various genres. She has taught creative writing classes at the University of California at San Diego, the Maui Writers Retreat and Conference, and other conferences and colleges, and has been on the faculty of the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing for seven years. She has also served on the boards of Clarion (San Diego) and the Horror Writers Association. You can learn more about Nancy and her work at her website: http://nancyholder.com/

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You are an incredibly busy and successful writer, writing in different genres, for different ages, in different formats. How do you keep up? Is there ever a danger of having too much on the go?

Interview: Craig Shaw Gardner

Craig Shaw Gardner will be a guest lecturer at this summer’s Odyssey Writing Workshop. He sold his first short story in 1977, and began writing full time in 1987. He has published over thirty novels ranging from his first, A Malady of Magics, to the Changeling War fantasy trilogy, written by “Peter Garrison,” to the horror novel Dark Whispers, written by “Chris Blaine.” Along the way, he’s done a number of media tie-ins, one of which–the novelization of Batman–became a New York Times bestseller. He’s also the author of more than forty short horror and fantasy stories, which have mostly appeared in original anthologies. Gardner has also served as both President and Trustee for the Horror Writers Association.

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You write a lot of horror, but you also write humorous and epic fantasy. How do your techniques and approaches change when you write in these different genres?

Interview: Paul Park

Paul Park will be a guest lecturer at this summer’s Odyssey Writing Workshop. He has written a dozen novels in a variety of genres. His most recent work includes a steampunk story in an upcoming anthology, an apocalyptic science-fiction Icelandic Edda, and a Forgotten Realms novel called The Rose of Sarifal, to be published under the pseudonym Paulina Claiborne. His novella Ghosts Doing the Orange Dance, nominated for the 2010 Nebula and Sturgeon Awards, will soon appear in an expanded, illustrated version from PS Publishing. He teaches writing and literature at Williams College in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, where he lives with his wife and two children.

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Your books often deal with religion. What fascinates you about the subject? Do you have specific themes in mind when you begin working on a piece?

Director’s Corner: The Pleasures of Science Fiction

Jeanne Cavelos is the director of the Odyssey Writing Workshop. She was a senior editor at Bantam Doubleday Dell, where she worked for eight years, editing the fantasy/science fiction program, the Abyss horror line, and other fiction and nonfiction. Jeanne is also the bestselling author of seven books and numerous short stories and articles. She has won the World Fantasy Award and twice been nominated for the Stoker Award.

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The Pleasures of Science Fiction

When you are writing within a genre, it’s important to understand that genre–its definition and boundaries, the varied works within it, and the pleasures it provides to readers. Reading a wide range of works within the genre is key, but you can also gain major insights by reading genre analyses: essays and books that study and describe the genre. “On Fairy-Stories” is J. R. R. Tolkien’s analysis of the genre of fairy-stories, or more generally, fantasy. If you haven’t read “On Fairy-Stories,” I highly recommend it. It is required reading for all Odyssey students. Tolkien explores the origins of fantasy, searches for a definition of the genre, and describes the unique pleasures that fantasy stories provide.