Original Meeting Date: August 18, 2021
At the heart of a novel are essential questions, emotions, and relationships that a writer may be drawn to – consciously or unconsciously – to explore over the course of more than one story. The writer’s territory is a place you have to draw your own map for. Award-winning author J.H. Diehl discusses her writing travels, from a childhood love of maps in fantasy novels to a life lived on four continents, including behind the Iron Curtain, and how mapping your territory as a writer can help you to create stronger, more resonant stories.
J.H. (Jean) Diehl is the author of the middle grade novel Tiny Infinities (Chronicle), a Bank Street Best Book of the Year and Junior Library Guild Selection, and the picture books Loon Chase and Three Little Beavers. Her short fiction has appeared in Indiana Review, Sycamore Review, Enhanced Gravity, Kestrel, and Bethesda Magazine, among others. She is the recipient of a Michener Fellowship and a Maryland Individual Artist Award. She has an MFA from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and lives in Maryland near Washington, DC. Learn more at https://www.jhdiehl.com/.