Authors Electric

  Have you been to a poetry reading where some of the poets read in the same way? The stretched pauses. The careful pacing. The slightly mystical cadence. The voice that quietly announces, “This is a poem.” If you have, you'll know that the prior   sentence, in “poetry voice,” would probably sound like this: The voice  that quietly  announces,  “This is a poem.” And it would be read with rising inflection at the end of every line, like everything was a question, or a revelation, or both. A recent  New York Times  piece looks at this, often called the “poet voice,” and asks why so many poets end up reading their work in nearly identical ways.  Poetry lives in two spaces at once. On the page, it’s quiet, interior, personal. Out loud, it becomes physical and shared. Breath matters. Silence matters. Tone matters. Pace matters. The same poem can feel like a different piece of writing depending on how it’s voiced. But sometimes readings by different po...

  In her newest book, A WITCH AWAKENS , poet and author Ellis Elliott writes a cozy mystery with unusual characters in it, namely "granny women." So I sat down with Ellis to ask her to tell me exactly what granny women are. Dianne: Ellis, it's so nice to talk again. I so enjoyed your latest book, A WITCH AWAKENS . I was really drawn to the occult and spells and such when I was a young adult, which, apparently, was a while ago now. Your book took me back to that, and made me enjoy it all over again. So, on your book, let’s start with the origin—what first drew you to the idea of the Granny Woman, and how did they find their way into A WITCH AWAKENS ? Ellis: The sparks of an idea for my first cozy mystery novel flew from the unlikely source of the Civil War memoir of my great-great-grandfather. The novel, appropriately titled THE THRILLING ADVENTURES OF DANIEL ELLIS, was published in 1867. Ellis served as a “pilot” guiding Union soldiers, runaway slaves, deserting Confedera...