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& Book Giveaway Comments Contest!
Kristin Bair O’Keeffe grew up in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. Her maternal grandfather, a Croatian immigrant, worked as a steelworker in U.S. Steel’s Clairton Works all his life. Nearly every weekend as a kid, Kristin visited her grandparents’ home in Clairton on a bluff overlooking the Monongahela River. As she played tag with her sisters, the smokestacks filled the sky with their gaseous utterances and the barges toted their haul down the river.
Kristin’s articles and essays have been published in Poets & Writers Magazine, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Baltimore Review, San Diego Family Magazine, The Gettysburg Review, and elsewhere. Her column—The Fiction Writing Workshop—appears monthly in the popular ezine Writers on the Rise. In 2008, her work was translated into Chinese and published in China’s most popular weekly news magazine, Oriental Outlook Weekly, and she is featured in the Bylines 2009 Writers’ Desk Calendar.
With a B.A. in English and journalism from Indiana University and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Columbia College Chicago, Kristin has always combined her love of writing with teaching. She is a passionate writing instructor with fifteen years of workshop experience at U.S. colleges and universities, including Boston College, Endicott College, Montserrat College of Art, University of New Hampshire, and Columbia College Chicago.
Kristin lives in Shanghai, China, with her husband and daughter where she writes, teaches fiction and nonfiction writing, blogs about her adventures (and misadventures) around the world, and curates Out Loud! The Shanghai Writers Literary Salon. She heads home to Pittsburgh at least once a year to visit family and eat a few hoagies from Danny’s Pizza. Find out more about Kristin by visiting her websites:
Kristin's blog, My Beautiful, Far-Flung Life: www.kristinbairokeeffeblog.com
Author website: www.kristinbairokeeffe.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/kbairokeeffe
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Kristin.Bair.OKeeffe
Just a reminder readers...Kristin is 13 hours ahead of us. 10 am EST is 11 pm Kristin time! So please leave your comments but look for Kristin's replies tomorrow. Thanks for understanding!
And as a fellow Pennsylvanian(my family members were Anthracite coal miners on the other side of the state)let me tell you that Kristin's vivid descriptions WOWed me!
Jodi and Kristin,
Thanks for a lively interview on this Monday morning. I love it. I love the part about Kristin's friend talking up the novel and the suggestion of where to send it, and then it was accepted!! WOW! That is a great story, and it is so nice to have writing friends looking out for you. I am hoping to win this book. :) Looking forward to reading it.
Margo
http://margodill.com/blog/
Great interview and ironically, I also wrote a book while living in China. It is my memoir-- and I sold thousands in the last year so now it has been picked up by a publisher and will be relaunched next year. China must bring us inspiration! I am going to order THIRSTY for sure- I hope it is on Kindle!
Funny! I, too, dislike outlines. In fact, I abhor them. I remember one professor I had in college who totally depended on them. She started each day with an outline on the overhead and would refer to it constantly. We had to copy it and structure our notes around it. Needless to say, I didn't do too well in that class!
It's interesting how some teachers try to push their preferred method of writing preperation on their students, as if it's the only way. See, I am an outliner - but what drove me nuts was when we had to write word-clouds or do term papers using note cards. To each their own!
Great interview. I enjoy Writers on the Rise, too. I wish you all the best with your debut!
THIRSTY sounds like an amazing read! Definitely going on my list. :)
Hey All,
Greetings from Shanghai! We're just getting started this morning on our side of the world.
Kay, let me know when your memoir comes out...love China memoirs.
Beth, I had forgotten all about those word clouds (with good reason)! Now I'm thinking about the various "organizational" techniques teachers introduced over the years.
You know, launching a first novel is by no means an individual effort and I am so grateful for all the support and conversation.
More later!
*Pops in* This was a great interview, and I'm glad to see that there are published writers who, like me, don't outline.
Great interview. I hope to get my hands on this book at some point, as it does sound appealing.
Good luck with your blog tour and your debut :)
Thanks, Dianna! Yep, seems like there are a lot of "non outliners" in the world.
Pop into my blog and let me know what you think of THIRSTY once you've read it. Would love to hear from you again.
Cheers!