by AnnSheybani | Mar 3, 2025 | Life, Reading, Writing
I was 26 the first time I realized that what people thought about me had more to do with them than with who I was/am as a person. Such an epiphany should have freed me; unfortunately, it didn’t. When I’d first moved to Iran, I wanted two things more than...
by AnnSheybani | Feb 17, 2025 | Writing
This is a guest post by Lucinda Halpern, head of Lucinda Literary. Lucinda gets writers book deals with traditional publishing houses. Even if you don’t harbor the fantasy of publishing your book with a big New York house, you’ll want to pay attention to...
by AnnSheybani | Feb 3, 2025 | Writing
I once had a lovely, wise professor who said, “If you write about a person, tell the truth, and do it with love and compassion.” To show what he meant, he read a scene from one of his books in which he described, in gorgeous language, the boy he once was, his drunken...
by AnnSheybani | Jan 26, 2025 | Life, Writing
Plato had it right when he said, “Those who tell the stories rule society.” In other words, if you want to get ahead–and ahead does not mean taking over Greenland–you need to open your mouth and share your experiences. A piece of advice I took to heart...
by AnnSheybani | Jan 19, 2025 | Writing
I was talking to a potential client yesterday about her dream of writing a book. She’s got this amazing story about rebuilding her life after losing everything—and I mean everything—in 2008. The kind of story that makes you realize your own problems aren’t...
by AnnSheybani | Jan 13, 2025 | Reading, Writing
When I was in grad school, I took an essay writing course. We were assigned an anthology called The Best American Essays, which still sits, all marked up with black ink, on my bookshelf. (If I could find a link, I’d put it here, but I can’t.) In it, I...
