MEET MARIBETH FISCHER
Maribeth Fischer is the author of three novels, The Language of Goodbye (Dutton, 2001), The Life You Longed For (Simon & Schuster, 2007), and A Season of Perfect Happiness (Dutton, forthcoming August 2024). Her books have been sold in the UK as well as Italy, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and Portugal.
Fischer has received three Delaware Division of the Arts Fellowships for fiction and nonfiction, has published essays in such journals as The Iowa Review, The Yale Review, Creative Nonfiction and Fourth Genre, and has received two Pushcart Prizes for her essays: “Stillborn” (1994) and “The Fiction Writer” (2014). Her essays have been mentioned twice as “notable essays” in Robert Atwan’s Best American Essays series.
Maribeth founded the Rehoboth Beach Writers’ Guild (RBWG) in 2004, where she currently serves as Executive Director. She teaches classes for the guild in both novel writing and creative nonfiction.
She lives in Lewes, Delaware, with her husband, Victor Letonoff, a police officer and writer.
How she TEACHES:
Give students permission to play, to experiment, and yes, sometimes to fail. Failures often lead, later, to break-through writing.
ON WRITING THE END:
The best writing often grows organically. Rather than adding onto the end of a chapter or essay, look for places to expand it from within.
GREATEST PASSION:
Reading. Maribeth’s favorite books have sticky notes all over them, marking a quote, a detail, a paragraph or several paragraphs to use in a writing exercise for her class.
QUOTE TO LIVE BY: