Infographic: the Author Behind the Pseudonym

Source: GalleyCat

Interview with Helen Oyeyemi on Her New Work

Author Helen Oyeyemi on the Politics—or Not—of Writing Black Female Characters

In Helen Oyeyemi’s new short story collection, “What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours,” keys aren’t always, well, the key. We spoke to the 31-year-old fiction writer about the book, her nomadic lifestyle, and whether she considers her work political.

The Ibadan-born, London-raised, Prague-inclined fiction writer Helen Oyeyemi is currently living in Lexington, Kentucky, a city that greeted her January arrival with an ice storm. (“Quite unnerving.”) Oyeyemi, whose sixth work of fiction and first book of short stories, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, was published by Riverhead this month, is in town for a residency at the University of Kentucky. Oyeyemi is notoriously nomadic—she spent her 20s going from European capital to European capital, looking for a city she “could be in a relationship with”—and I expected the dreamy yet very much cosmopolitan author to be a little out of her depth in Appalachia.

But the dreaminess she brings to her fiction, which draws from a variety of mythological traditions, seems to carry into her life as well. “I find it quite hard for the place I’m physically in to make a dent on my mind,” she told me over the phone. “It might actually be because I read so much that I’m already in other places, so it’s just a difficulty in even knowing where I am at any given time.”

Read further @ Broadly

Principles of Storytelling

3 Crucial Principles Of Storytelling You Can Learn From Kevin Spacey + House Of Cards

So what advice does Francis Underwood have to dish on storytelling? Spacey recommends that before you even begin, it’s important to ask yourself, “What story do you want to tell?” He suggests that everything will fall in line “if you start with what the result is going to be.” Once you get over the initial hurdle of determining what story you want to tell, you have to examine what elements will make this story truly engaging. Spacey goes on to propose three pillars that must be present in every good story.

1. Conflict – “Conflict creates tension and tension keeps people engaged with your story.”

2. Authenticity – “Stay true to your brand and audiences will respond to that authenticity with enthusiasm and passion.”

3. The Audience – “Does it matter what’s behind a link if no one clicks on it?”

Read further @ NewsCred