Description: Readers will be drawn in by the author's engaging voice, but they'll keep turning pages because of how effortlessly she offers insight into the writing practice by sharing all she has learned from writing and publishing eight novels.
Brief description: Barbara Shoup is an award winning, multi-genre author who served for many years as Executive Director of the Indiana Writers Center and has taught the craft of writing for over 40 years. She has penned eight novels and co-authored Novel Ideas, a highly acclaimed, definitive guide for aspiring novelists on how to write great fiction.
Barbara's young adult novels Wish You Were Here and Stranded in Harmony were selected as the American Library Association's Best Books for Young Adults. Her novel Vermeer's Daughter was a School Library Journal Best Adult Book for Young Adults. She was also the recipient of the 2006 PEN Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Working Writer Fellowship. She lives in Indianapolis, Indiana.Review Quotes:
Praise for A Commotion in Your Heart:
"A Commotion in Your Heart: Notes on Writing and Life is a book I didn't know I needed until I read it. I felt as if Barbara Shoup was with me at the local coffee shop, offering suggestions on how to approach this road block or another so that I may keep moving forward with my writing. Readers will be drawn in by Shoup's voice, but they'll keep turning pages because of how effortlessly she offers insight into the writing practice by sharing all she has learned from writing and publishing eight books. In fact, it is the way she uses her own work to illustrate her advice that makes Commotion stand out and will inspire every writer now matter where they are with their work."
-Melissa Fraterrigo, author of Glory Days
"Barbara Shoup is one of the best writing teachers I know, and also a kick-ass writer herself. This book of writing advice from her is something all writers, aspiring and experienced, will want. Don't pass it by."
-SJ Rozan, best-selling author of Paper Son
"A Commotion in Your Heart is a book that should be on every writer's bookshelf, next to Bird by Bird, Writing Down the Bones, and Welty's One Writer's Beginnings. Reading it is like having a writing partner who hands you tools but also knows exactly what you're going through at every stage of the process and inspires with her tenacity, wisdom, and humor. All writers, no matter how new or how experienced, will find something they need within these pages."
-Susan Neville, author of Iconography: A Writer's Meditation
Praise for Barbara Shoup's Novel Ideas:
"Novel Ideas is one of the most useful writing texts I've encountered in twelve years of teaching. The interviews have an appealing personality and intimacy but also serve as gateways to discussing more universal concerns of process and craft. I'm thrilled about the prospect of reintroducing this text to my students."
--Elise Juska, author of One for Sorrow, Two for Joy
"I've always loved this book and find it to be very useful when writing and revising my own novels. I've read nearly every novel-writing book out there, and this is the best by far."
--Elizabeth Stuckey-French, co-author of Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft
"Novel Ideas is the real thing: the editors offer an excellent crash course on how to write a novel, and the contemporary novelists they interview offer advice, insight, consolation, inspiration, and (above all) stories about stories. I can't imagine a writer who wouldn't find this book useful, or a reader who wouldn't find it stimulating and provocative."
-Robert Hellenga, author of The Italian Lover
"Many texts exist on writing the short story, but there are few useful ones about its less predictable cousin, the novel. This valuable book includes general fiction principles but then expands to the particular testimony of contemporary authors discussing how they wrote their well-known novels. The result for readers, writers, and writing teachers is not a cookbook but a bountiful literary feast."
--Doris Betts, author of Heading West