One question writers are often asked is, “Where do you get your ideas?” In this series of posts, I’m hoping to introduce you to authors to honor their work and to explain their creative process to curious readers.
Here’s Teri Rizvi, journalist and essayist, whose recent publication is ONE HEART WITH COURAGE: ESSAYS AND STORIES.
“I’m a journalist by training, so I’m attuned to observing, listening and trying to see
the bigger picture. As a personal essayist, I find it particularly helps to be observant. The essence of life is often found in life’s small moments — a child’s innocent remark, the way lightning bugs dance and dodge in the summers of our youth, a to-do list scrawled on a
kitchen blackboard, the sway of a kite’s tail in a tree.” The opening essay, “Sowing Hope,” tells the story of the 50 tiny fir trees her son planted in the woods – “a symbol of hope.”
Her Amazon profile desribes Rizvi as “a journalist and storyteller who has traveled widely” and a writer whose essays “illuminate our shared humanity through a series of small, everyday moments – a child’s T-ball practice, a socially distanced parking lot lunch with a friend – as well as recollections of major life milestones such as joyful weddings in foreign lands.”
The book takes its title from a phrase from Martin Sheen when he received an honorary degree from the University of Dayton: “Remember this above all: One heart with courage is a majority.”
The author and publisher Braughler Books are donating all proceeds from book sales to the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop endowment, which helps keep the workshop affordable for writers.
