Happy Independence Day to those who celebrate it! Please note that Cynsations will be taking a very short hiatus, and will resume posting next Thursday, July 10!The Cynsations grand prize giveaways for July are two signed copies of Wake by Lisa McMann (Simon Pulse, 2008). From the promotional copy: "For 17 year-old Janie Hannagan, getting sucked into other people's dreams is getting old. Especially...

Did you see Tuesday's Cynsations post about the Awesome Austin Writers Workshop?If not, check it out as well as posts by Greg Leitich Smith, Liz Garton Scanlon, P. J. Hoover, Jo Whittemore, and--these just in--Alison Dellenbaugh, Alison's part two (AKA Coming Back to Earth), April Lurie, Shana Burg, Carmen Oliver, Chris Barton, Jennifer Ziegler, and Jennifer's part two (AKA Additional AAWW-tobiogra...

Louise Hawes, a North Carolina resident, is the author of two short fiction collections, Anteaters Don't Dream and Other Stories (University Press of Mississippi, 2007) and Black Pearls: a Faerie Strand (Houghton Mifflin,2008). Her novels include The Vanishing Point (Houghton Mifflin, 2004), Rosey in the Present Tense (Walker, 2001), and Waiting for Christopher (Authors Guild, 2006). She is a facul...

David Gifaldi to David Gifaldi: "I grew up in the snow country of Western New York, in a village near Lake Ontario between Buffalo and Rochester. Even though I now live in a big city (Portland, Oregon), I'm happy to return to the small-town pace and country spareness of the old hometown when I visit my family every year."After college (the first time), I worked for a year in an automotive plant to...

Sparkling local writers joined forces at the Awesome Austin Writers Workshop from June 27 to June 29 at my home.The objectives were to build and nurture an already strong youth literature writing community (we rock!), to exchange ideas (we shared!), to support one another (we cheered!), to gain insights into our works in progress (we learned!), to offer a venue for advanced writers to interact and...