We’re excited to introduce Plume’s September featured writer, Paula Treick DeBoard, author of Here We Lie, The Drowning Girls, The Fragile World, & The Mourning Hours.
Paula Treick DeBoard is a fiction writer in Northern California, with roots throughout the Midwest. She is the author of four novels, including Here We Lie (Park Row Books, 2018), and she holds an MFA from the University of Southern Maine. Since 2015, she has taught writing at the University of California, Merced. Her street cred with students begins and ends with an appearance in 2016 on a Comic-Con panel called “Sweet Dreams Aren’t Made of These: Horror and Thriller Writers Bring You Their Worst Nightmares.” If it weren’t for her husband and two dogs, she would probably get more writing done. Or maybe not.
Keep an eye out this month for Paula’s Digital Plume (drops next week) and her interview on Plume: A Writer’s Podcast.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A PLUME FEATURED WRITER?
Every month, we feature a new writer in a number of ways:
- Digital Plume: Our Digital Plume is our monthly edition of Plume. It comes with a letter of encouragement written by the featured writer, followed up by an excerpt of their writing. This is our callback to our original Plume, a monthly physical present that used to come in the mail alongside some small goodies and writing prompts. (You can learn more about this shift here.) We hope to bring this back one day, but in the meantime, our Digital Plume is available via Patreon.
- Featured Podcast Episode: Every month, we interview our featured writers on our podcast, which is available anywhere you stream your favorite podcasts. Here, you can hear the writer read their letter of encouragement, and we talk about the included excerpt, along with other questions about writing, the writer’s life, publishing, and general writing advice. These interviews are emotional, honest, and meant to both feature the writer as well as keep you inspired in your own writing.
- Additional Content: Throughout the month, we’ll share prompts inspired by the featured writer, bonus content from our recorded episode, and passages and insights from their writing lives. This is in addition to our Plume Slack online community for writers and our weekly Plume Zoom writer meetups.
Much of this content is free to the public, but some (like the Digital Plume & bonus excerpts) are reserved for our patrons. Please note: all of the money raised on our Patreon goes towards paying our featured writers and supporting the work we do to bring you rich, meaningful content every month. We hope you’ll consider supporting us (lowest tier is only $2/month).
We’re all writers here at Plume, and we’ve joined together to help support each other’s efforts, along with other women and non-binary writers, as we pursue our personal goals. We really do believe that we are stronger together — and that our writing is best when nurtured as a part of an encouraging and supportive community. Come join us!
Happy writing!
Dawn, Melanie, & Sam
The Plume Team