Tag: storytelling

  • The Pub Shall Rise Again

    The Pub Shall Rise Again

    I read the news today, oh boy. Last Thursday, the texts started arriving. My daughter got the first one. It was from Liam Macik, a playwright, director, and podcaster who was a frequent special guest at Riley’s Storytelling Nights a few years back. The second text came to me. It was from Christopher Laughrey, my long-time musical…

  • Forward into the Past: Milford Writers Festival

    Forward into the Past: Milford Writers Festival

    Eliot … crashed a convention of science-fiction writers in a motel in Milford, Pennsylvania …. “I love you sons of bitches,” Eliot said …. “You’re all I read any more. You’re the only ones who’ll talk about the really terrific changes going on, the only ones crazy enough to know that life is a space…

  • Looking Ahead:
    This Weekend at the Milford Festival

    Sixty-four years ago, science fiction writers Virginia Kidd and James Blish moved to Milford, PA, into a home that they called Arrowhead. It was there that Virginia Kidd founded the first literary agency devoted to the sf genre and where James Blish and colleagues such as Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm wrote stories that helped…

  • Writer at Work:
    Santas, Wizards, & Life behind the Curtain

    So it’s December 1997. I’m driving north out of Oakland, toward Bigelow Boulevard and downtown Pittsburgh. It’s a gray day, light snow falling. Colored lights trim some of the buildings along North Craig Street, but it doesn’t feel like Christmas. Then I see him. I clear the rise toward Bigelow Boulevard, and there he is—fourteen-feet…

  • From Page to Screen:
    Talking about Writing @ The Penguin

    It all began with Robert A. Heinlein. Back in the 1940s, Heinlein gave what may well be the best writing advice ever given, a five step approach to achieving success as a spinner of tales. And last week at The Penguin Bookshop, an attentive crowd joined me in a consideration of those rules and how they apply…

  • Seeing Stories:
    All-Star Story Night Preview – Part II

    Seeing is believing. With that in mind, if you still need convincing that you should be at this month’s All-Star Story Night at Riley’s Pour House, be sure to check out the links at the end of this blog. My previous All-Star Preview featured audio from Anna Voelker’s June performance–a show-stopping, draw-dropping delivery of a piece titled…