Caroline Leech

About Caroline Leech

Caroline Leech is a Scottish writer who has lived in Houston since 2007. In 2013, she founded the blog InspiringHoustonWomen.com for which she interviews Houston women, each of whom has an inspirational story to tell. Caroline writes novels for teenagers, and in her previous British life, she was the editor of a glossy photographic book, Welsh National Opera – the first sixty years. Caroline is also mother to three fanatical teenage readers and writers.

If you want to read the latest Atwood, can you wait a while? Say, 100 years?

September 20, 2015, by

As we launch the 35th season of the Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series tomorrow with National Book Award winner Jonathan Franzen, reading from his latest novel Purity, this story reminds us how fortunate Houston is to have the world’s great literary figures make a stop in our city. Both Margaret Atwood and David Mitchell have appeared in front of sell out audiences as part of the Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series. Lucky for us, some of their work won’t be read for a 100 years!

Future Library, Katie Paterson  Photo (c) Kristin Von Hirsch 2016

Future Library, Katie Paterson
Photo (c) Kristin Von Hirsch 2016

If you want to read Margaret Atwood’s latest piece of writing, Scribbler Moon, you will have to wait a while, say, for another century.

Atwood is the first contributing author to the Future Library project, an artwork created by Scottish artist Katie Paterson for The City of Oslo. Paterson has planted a thousand trees in a forest just outside the city where they will be looked after for one hundred years, until 2114.  In each of those hundred years, one author will be commissioned to write a manuscript of some sort and that piece of writing will be placed, unpublished, in a secure and specially designed room in the new public library being built in Oslo. They will all remain unread until the collection of one hundred manuscripts is complete. Then in 2114, the trees will be cut down and the wood will be used to supply paper for a special anthology of books in which one hundred years of writing will be published. Continue reading

Houston novelist brings coal-mining to life in Whisper Hollow

June 10, 2015, by

Chris Cander - by Caroline Leech“I’ve loved to write my whole life,” says Houston author Chris Cander, whose novel Whisper Hollow was published this spring by Other Press to critical acclaim. “It’s always been a passion for me.”

A former fire-fighter, Chris was also a competitive bodybuilder and model before she brought her literary calling to the fore. Now, however, she knows she made the right choice.

“I can legitimately say that I am doing exactly what I want to be doing and I passionately love the way I get to spend my days. I’m incredibly lucky to be able to say that, I know, but now I really am doing my favorite thing.”

The publication of Whisper Hollow did not, however, happen overnight.

“It took a very long time to get this story to this point. I wrote it, and then I rewrote it, I think, four times from beginning to end. It’s four hundred pages long, and there are at least that many other pages that will never be read because they were rewritten and filed away somewhere.” Continue reading

Founding class of creative writers graduate from HSPVA

May 29, 2015, by

HSPVA Seniors 3259This week saw the emergence into the wider literary world of the first graduating class from the four-year Creative Writing program at the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (HSPVA).

When Judith Switek was appointed Director of Creative Writing in 2010, she also took on the challenge of designing the new writing curriculum.

croppedJudith Switek - main - 3273“I went to visit a couple of other fine arts schools,” she says, “and of course, I talked to the other art form department chairs at HSPVA to see how their programs were structured. For example, for the first two years in Art, they give the students a taste of lots of different styles. Then as juniors and seniors, they can decide what they want to focus on. I knew I wanted to do that with my program too. I studied playwriting at NYU without ever having written a play before, but if I’d never had the chance to try playwriting, I would never have known how much I loved it. This way, the kids are able to try everything out and see what they feel strongest in. Continue reading