Lisa Birk

The Da Vinci Code is fast paced, a “page-turner.” Proust’s In Search of Lost Time is not. We don’t need Writer’s Digest to define...

We are awash in narrative. It arrives on every platform in ever-shorter form. (A Little Life not withstanding.) Which has me wondering,...

Consider the Comic where what’s not on the page is as important as what is. So says comic artist and writer Scott McCloud in his...

Bad juju comes to most of us, and sometimes it comes all at once and sometimes it is a staccato of bad news, one thing, another thing,...

How Not to Write I used to keep a book on my shelf to remind myself how not to write. The book, call it Stricken, consisted of a...

Novels are my second love, the roast beef in my diet. And I relish the meal. But I down short stories like chocolates. For their density....

I have just spent two-and-a-half years revising my novel.* The odds on getting it published feel, well, long. My writer friends...

Some years ago I taught Communications 201 at Boston University. It was a plum job, as adjunct jobs go, because our students longed to be...

I lost nearly all my sense of smell when I was eight. One day my socks itched and the next day I was allergic to seemingly everything...