You've probably heard the stories about how io9 got its name. And maybe you know that io9 co-founder Charlie Jane Anders and I were inspired by Kathy Keeton, whose groundbreaking magazine 'Omni' combined coverage of real science with science fiction. But what you probably don't know is how unlikely it was that io9 ever succeeded at all.
The stories my pupils told me were astonishing. One told how he had witnessed his cousin being shot in the back five times; another how his parents had died of AIDS. Another said that he'd probably been to more funerals than parties in his young life. For me - someone who had had an idyllic, happy childhood - this was staggering.
I wanted to do what I was seeing Dorothy Dandridge doing, what I saw Marilyn Monroe do, what I saw Bette Davis do. I wanted to do that: to tell stories. I wanted to make people laugh, make people cry. I wanted to be a storyteller.
A lot of my stories about the old days, they're delicious and funny. But every time I recall the early days, it's painful. With every anecdote, it's painful because you're summoning up the terribly, terribly difficult life of my parents. And it's painful because I didn't realize at the time how hard it was for them.
I admire Eudora Welty. 'Delta Wedding' is a book I've given as a present to numerous women. Eudora Welty rocks. She writes such jewel-like, fine, refined short stories.
I think about the question of perspective in reporting all the time, and since I spent 20 years of my career in Washington as both a reporter and an editor I'm keenly aware that a newspaper should not be dominated by stories in which the only voices and perspective come from those in power.
With acting, you do want to get every job, and you're trying to get every audition, but then you reach a certain stage where you start to kind of gravitate toward the stories and the people that have a similar heartbeat.
My best friend and I went to sleep-away camp every summer. We'd share stories of making out with boys, but we never did, so we made it all up. My real first kiss was at a friend's house when I was in junior high. He was such a good kisser, and we're still close friends!
I'm really just trying... to write what feels true to me. I don't think about a lofty responsibility. I think I'd be paralyzed by that. Like any of my male colleagues, I'm writing the stories that interest me in a way that feels true to me.
Since childhood, I wrote a lot of fiction, a lot of stories, but I most loved writing essays.
People write me every day. It feels like this cycle that keeps giving, because as far along as I get in my happiness and success, hearing other people's stories is a constant reminder of where I came from, where people are, and how much help everybody still needs.
I don't shy from controversy. I'm telling stories, and I'll tell whatever story seems like it wants to be told.
Women's stories are valid, and they need to be developed in a way that appeals to a broader audience. And what is 'women's television' other than TV that women would enjoy watching?
In every industrialized nation, the movement to reform health care has begun with stories about cruelty.
I started out writing stories because that's all I wanted to read, but now I don't know if I'll ever write one again.
I started creative writing classes at Aberdeen Central Library, and the writer-in-residence there, Todd McEwen, encouraged me a great deal. He showed my stories to his editor, and I thought that was just what happened to everyone who took his classes!
I feel like Valleywag has been different things with different writers over the years. Up and down. I think it's at their best when they get a legitimate scoop, like when someone leaks them documents. I feel like we could do more of that, breaking stories.
My maternal granddad, Leonard, was full of amazing stories. He was an orphan, with 11 or 12 brothers and sisters, and he used to tell us about growing up near the Irrawaddy river and how one brother was eaten by a crocodile.
We want the big stories, of course, of the great men, but there's as much drama and interest and lessons to be learned in actions that people like us take on a daily basis.
Although I could read before I went to school, and I won the school reading prize at five years old, my early children's stories came from the radio and watching films at a cinema on Saturday mornings in Australia. It wasn't until I was nine years old on a ship returning from Australia that I was introduced to children's books.
I like exploring both the light parts and the dark parts of a single person. And all of those shades tend to come out most acutely in stories about families.
In this universe, and this existence, where we live with this duality of whether we exist or not and who are we, the stories we tell ourselves are the stories that define the potentialities of our existence. We are the stories we tell ourselves.
I was intentionally curbing the impulse to be funny and hiding the ability. I wrote any number of very serious attempts at poems, short stories, novels - horrible. At a certain point, I recognized that it was fun to write dialogue that had a degree of lightness and humor.
From Shakespeare to Robi Thakur, everyone has written stories about people and incidents around them. There is no creativity minus reality irrespective of how flowery or abstract you make it.
The Internet is going to have a bigger impact on content creators than the television ever had. The reason why that's the case is that suddenly you're able to tell stories 24/7 in the home, out of the home, in every room of the home. A television screen can be in your pocket through a smartphone.
It is well known that Turkey has more imprisoned journalists than any other country, but as a result of the chilling effect of these prosecutions on the press, many stories never make the news.
I always loved ghost stories and haunted house stories, whether they were done in a fantasy way or done in a realistic way.
Listening to the stories my colleagues are researching and grappling with - in terms of access to documents, psychological understanding of their subjects, artful composition and determination to extrapolate from an individual's life lessons and insights that we can all learn from - I am each time overwhelmed by joy.
I always write stories, and I write poems, too. I just never sell them to anybody, but I write them. They're good, too. They never leave the house. They're too disclosing.
I want to make my own films from my own scripts based on stories I want to tell, but they take time to put together.
There's just so many great stories in the past that you can know a little bit about, but you can't know it all, and that's where imagination can work.
I like it when stories are left open.
I've always loved reading and always loved the movies. Storytelling is one of the oldest of human endeavors, and they give us our understanding of the world and our place in it. When I discovered that there were people who professionally were involved in the creation of stories, it was game over - I knew what I wanted to do it.
To understand and reconnect with our stories, the stories of the ancestors, is to build our identities.
I don't have any horror stories of trying to start as a comedian and eating it constantly on stage.
I'm not a big believer in the idea of genre - I'm a fan of any writer who can pull me into compelling characters and stories - but I can't imagine I'll start writing domestic dramas any time soon.
