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The Existential Experience of Mystery: Joanna Biggar on Her new Novel "Melanie's Song" "I was attracted to the mystery genre not just because I love mysteries but because I think mysteries are at the heart of everything" Joanna Biggar A missing girl, a cultural revolution, a friend tangled in the mysteries of both. How did Melanie, the most reserved of the group of young women Joanna Biggar first introduced us to in That Paris Year, become a folkloric figure of so many stories: all at once a revolutionary, a young mother, a bank robber, a mystic and a spiritual healer? Joanna … [Read more...]

Linda Watanabe McFerrin Shares two Poems from her Upcoming Book "Containment" and "One Thousand Cranes" both "speak to the suffering, sacrifice, courage and price that is paid when horror trumps humanity." Earlier this month, August, I served again as a member of the Faculty at the 28th Annual Book Passage Travel Writers & Photographers Conference in Corte Madera California. This is a truly special conference for me as this is the forum that launched me into a career in travel writing back in 1991 when I won its first travel writing award. This year, 2019, the conference … [Read more...]

"Sakura no Sono" by Linda Watanabe McFerrin "And the branches of the cherry trees were lit with flames, the sparks—petals of fire, carried on the wind." In the early spring cherry trees are often described as being ablaze with blossoms. This is a good, if commonplace, description of that strange and enormous pink event which spreads through the treetops and consumes the sky in a colorful flurry. In "Sakura no Sono," an apocalyptic vision of a real event which happened to her mother, Linda Watanabe McFerrin's cherry blossoms have been struck ablaze by an American firebombing. "And … [Read more...]

David Downie on "Melanie's Song" David Downie a fellow francophile travel-writer and novelist in his own right, gives his thoughts on the new novel by Joanna Biggar. “Joanna Biggar explored Paris as a post-adolescent during the distant Age of Kennedy in That Paris Year. Now she explores the backwaters of American revolutionary culture during the so-called Summer of Love in Melanie’s Song. With wit and aplomb, Biggar reminds readers that love may be free but has its consequences. A poet and journalist, when she turns her talents to storytelling, the result is a page-turning novel where … [Read more...]

Joanna Biggar Presents a Chapter from her Upcoming Novel In the fifth chapter of "Melanie's Song" we "encounter a gathering of personalities and links that will weave into the fabric of the novel." At the beginning of the fifth chapter of Melanie's Song, we find J.J. leaving Mendocino after her first visit, as both friend and journalist, to investigate the burnt-out commune in the forest where her missing friend, Melanie, was rumored to have lived. Soon we also encounter a gathering of personalities and links that will weave into the fabric of the novel. We meet some of those tied … [Read more...]