Writer's Digest May/June 2025

AComputer Katherine: Johnson Called How Katherine Helped Put America on the Moon is a picture book biography written by veteran author Suzanne Slade. It is also the first picture book I illustrated. The story follows the life of famed mathematician Katherine Johnson, a young girl whose love of numbers led her to help NASA accomplish the astonishing feat of moon exploration. As I read, I pictured little Katherine’s imagination swirling with numbers, equations, geometric shapes, and colors. I wanted to capture the awe a child might feel when diving into something that fascinates them. The illustration was the first piece of art that I finished for the interior of the book (the text on the page reads, “And her love for math grew exponentially!”) and was not initially the original…

I may be in the minority on this, but when I hear research, I get excited because the next word that pops in my head is possibilities. That wasn’t always the case. When I was in high school and even undergrad, research often meant looking up a topic assigned by a teacher and late evenings in the library trying not to doze off from boredom in a study carrel. It was tedious. Sure, I learned important things, but there was rarely satisfaction in it. But then in grad school, I got to experience the excitement and inspiration that came from researching something that interested me, often related to creative people whose work I admired. I got to experience research beyond simply checking out stacks of books from the library (though…

JESSICA BERG is the principal agent and founder of Rosecliff Literary, an agency dedicated to championing writers who feel like they don’t belong elsewhere. She specializes in bold, boundary-pushing fiction and nonfiction that reveals untold history. A multi-nominated writer and MFA graduate from Spalding University, Jessica is a member of AALA and EFA. Represented by Amy Collins of Talcott Notch, she brings expertise, vision, and deep industry knowledge to her work, advocating for authors with stories that demand to be told. JON HICKEY’s debut novel is Big Chief (Simon & Schuster, April 2025). He earned an MFA from Cornell University and a Stegner Fellowship in fiction at Stanford University. His short stories have appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Gulf Coast, and The Massachusetts Review, among other journals. Originally from Minnesota…

Ahh, research. Love it or hate it, a story can’t be built without it. Many writers struggle with forging an article out of piles of background research, interview notes, and attempted outlines. We all know it’s better to have a mountain of research than next to nothing, but extracting the value can feel as challenging as mining for precious metals. In the last year, I’ve found a reliable tool for shaping research into nonfiction stories. I believe it can work for all kinds of writing—nonfiction, fiction, poetry, even commercial copywriting, or technical communication. The practice of visual note-taking—also known as sketchnoting—has improved my ability to see patterns in my research and helped me define the structure for these stories, leading to the creation of better-written articles with less stress. One…

I started college in an art conservatory, but after a string of straight Cs, quickly learned that life wasn’t for me. In search of a new calling, I decided I wanted to write novels. But instead of creative writing, I switched my major to journalism. Because, I figured, that’s where the real money was. (If you find it hard to trust anything I say at this point, I wouldn’t blame you.) I got my degree, and after college got a job at a local paper, chasing calls on the cop scanner. I didn’t make much money—but it taught me a number of things suited for a career writing novels: how to meet a deadline, how to work quickly, how to collaborate, how to navigate a crime scene, how to be…

For F.A. Battle, the grand-prize winner of the Writer’s Digest 5th Annual Personal Essay Awards, writing “Ground Zero” was a way to work through a change within herself—or perhaps truer, to come to terms with who she always was. “I started this essay many years ago, when I was coming to terms with my sexuality,” she says. “I used writing as a way to work through the confusing and scary feelings around this huge shift in my identity. Back then, I didn’t have access to an LGBT community to support me. Being someone who was still married to a man, I had a lot of shame and fear around these changes. I didn’t know what to do with all those feelings. This essay came out of that very cathartic work.”…