Heather Sellers Writes How-to Book
for Writers at All Levels

HOLLAND - A new book by author and Hope College faculty member Heather Sellers offers guidance for those interested in becoming writers themselves.

"Page After Page," subtitled "Discover the confidence and passion you need to start writing and keep writing (no matter what)," features the lessons that Sellers has learned during her journey as a writer. Writing in a conversational tone, Sellers illustrates her advice with anecdotes from her experience.

"Every writer is a little different," Sellers notes in her introduction. "But all people who write have similar fears and blocks about writing. Most of my writing students fall into predictable pits and traps. I want to tell you what I know about the writing path, and, I hope, give you some equipment so you can build bridges over the traps."

"The chapters in this book explain how I found out what kind of writing life was right for me, and what kinds of exercises and books I found useful along the way," she writes. "This book is, I hope, like sitting down with me, in my living room, over tea."

"Page by Page," published in hardcover by Writer's Digest Books, is divided into three general sections: "Blank Pages: Creating a New Writing Self," "Turning Pages: How to Maintain Your Commitment to Writing" and "New Pages: Finding Your Place in the World of Writing." The book contains 30 chapters, each four to 12 pages long, covering topics ranging from "The First Day," to "Anxiety" to "Rejection, Bliss, Speeding Tickets." Exercises at the end of each chapter guide the reader in applying the book's suggestions.

Grounded in 15 years' worth of experience, "Page by Page" began to take form in the spring of 2002, while Sellers was on leave from Hope as the Viebranz Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y. As part of her own writing regimen - making time to write and staying with the process are key pieces of advice in the book, by the way - she started writing with her students in mind.

"Every morning I got up and I'd write these letters to my students," she said. "And then it started turning into this memoir."

A memoir it might have stayed, if not for the exercises she kept including.

"One of my readers said, 'It's not really a memoir if you're assigning homework," Sellers said. "It's half memoir of the writing life, and half instruction."

Sellers has received national recognition through the years for her poetry and short fiction. She has enjoyed reaching a broader audience, though, with "Page by Page." The Writer's Digest Book Club recently featured the book as a "Main Selection," and as a result the volume has found its way to readers around the country, many of whom have taken time to write to her about their experiences as writers and their response to the book.

"It's been the best thing ever, these e-mails," she said. "It's great to be published, but to be read - it's amazing."

Sellers has been a member of the Hope faculty since 1995, and is an associate professor of English. In addition to teaching, she serves as advisor to the student-published "Opus" literary magazine and as co-coordinator of the college's Visiting Writers Series.

Nearly 50 of her poems have appeared in journals, anthologies and magazines, including "Louisiana Literature," "Ascent," "The New Virginia Review," "Gulf Coast," "Hawai'i Review," "Barrow Street," "The MidWest Quarterly" and "So To Speak."

Her short fiction, memoir and creative nonfiction appear in journals, anthologies and magazines, including Shannon Ravenel's "The Best Stories of the New South." Her short story "Hunting" from "The Chattahoochee Review" was listed in the "100 Distinguished Stories of 1991" section of the "Best American Short Stories." Recent prose has appeared in "The Sun," "The Madison Review," "The Southeast Review," "The Writer," "Writer's Digest," "Beloit Fiction Journal" and "Five Points," and is forthcoming in "The Massachusetts Review." Her work appears alongside that of Sandra Cisneros, Antonya Nelson, Peter Ho Davies and Pam Houston in the new anthology "Falling Backwards: stories of fathers and daughters."

Sellers was one of only 41 writers nationally to receive a National Endowment for the Arts grant for 2000-02 to create original work or translate work. The collection of stories that she completed through the grant, "Georgia Under Water," was named a finalist in the 2002 "Paterson Fiction Prize" competition and in 2001 was recognized in the "Discover Great New Writers" program of Barnes & Noble bookstores.

Her publications also include "Your Whole Life," a chapbook of poetry; "Drinking Girls and Their Dresses," a book of poetry that was chosen by Brenda Hillman as part of the Sawtooth Prize; and "Spike and Cubby's Ice Cream Island Adventure," a children's book written with Amy Young. Sellers also recently finished a draft of a textbook, "The Passionate Beginner"; is working on a memoir, tentatively titled "Face First"; and plans to write a sequel to "Page by Page," titled "Chapter after Chapter."

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