Final Reading With Liz Hand

Final reading from Liz Hand at the Salam Award workshop. It was such a delight co-teaching with her — I hadn’t met Liz previously, somehow, despite both of us being in genre and going to conventions for decades, but we co-taught very smoothly.

I think Liz and I had different strengths and different approaches, which is great for the students — ideal, in a lot of ways, because if they just have one teacher, sometimes there’s a tendency to take that teacher’s thoughts too much to heart. In writing, feedback is good, thoughtful and knowledgeable feedback is better, but in the end, the writer has to be able to make their own choices with the story.

Fun tidbit — Liz and I both wrote porn in our early careers. So we did have SOME writing things in common.

I read Liz’s _Wylding Hall_ on the flight to Pakistan and enjoyed it, but I also want to point you to her forthcoming: _A Haunting on the Hill_ — a novel authorized by Shirley Jackson’s family, inspired by the classic _The Haunting of Hill House_. Coming October 2023.

Here’s some bio notes to entice you:

Elizabeth Hand is the bestselling author of eighteen genre-spanning novels and five collections of short fiction and essays. Her work has received multiple Shirley Jackson, World Fantasy and Nebula Awards, among other honors, and several of her books have been New York Times and Washington Post Notable Books. She is on the faculty of the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing, and divides her time between the coast of Maine and North London. You can find her on Twitter @liz_hand and on Facebook @ElizabethHandAuthor.

Link to books I mentioned in comments.

Lahore, Pakistan.