Featured Author: ~ Sandra Hosking I wrote my first play in seventh grade. It was a corny murder mystery called Death by the Dollar. I think it's stuck in a drawer somewhere under a pile of old writing notebooks. After I discovered I really didn't know how to write a play, I started writing poetry. I wrote about flying though the clouds, friendship, love and romance, God, racism and the end of the world. It was all either tortured or full of dreamy sighs. Nobody was really interested in reading it except me. I still compose poems for myself. I write them in a special notebook, one with a fuzzy blue cover. I don't care if they're bad or good or if they get published. In high school I stopped writing for the most part. My teachers wanted me to write essays and research papersuseful but they sucked the creativity out of me. I had a serious case of writer's block. All while I studied to become a high school English teacher during college, I secretly wished I could be a writer. Then several years ago, I stopped wishing and took a creative writing class. It was like someone popped a cork out of my brain and ideas for stories and poems and plays gushed out. I've been writing daily ever since, whether it's poems, e-mails to my friends or newspaper articles. I love writing plays the most, though, because they are meant to be performed. It's one thing to sit in a chair and read about your characters on a flat page, but it's magic when you see them walking around in front of you and talking. I've written skits for my drama students, five short plays and one full-length. My work has been performed in Spokane, Los Angeles, and yes, New York City (not on Broadway, but close enough). While I was visiting my grandmother in the hospital recently, her friend called. She said, "I can't talk right now. My granddaughter the playwright is here." Even if I write the worst plays in the world, just being called a playwright makes me feel warm and tingly all over, like a swallow of raspberry sherbert. Yum. ~ Sandra Hosking is a news assistant and reporter at the Journal of Business newspaper in Spokane and is director of the Spokane Civic Theatre School. She also is a graduate student in creative writing at Eastern Washington University. Plays: Detention A drama about a teacher and a rebellious student Object Lesson A drama about the end of an affair Fortune's Fool A comedy about making assumptions about people Scribbledoodle An absurd comedy where drawings come to life Romeo & Juliet: Part II What would have happened if Romeo and Juliet had lived? A farce. Jigsaw A drama in which Cecilia desperately tries to protect her handicapped sister from the world. Contact: E-mail sandykayz@cs.com Web site www.geocities.com/sandykayz/Homex.html   Play starters: 1. Write a short scene beginning with this line: "what are we going to do when Newton gets here?"  2. Write a scene between two people in which one person really wants to leave the room but the other person won't let him/her.

~ Back to Featured Authors & Artists ~

Copyright 2000-2006 ~ All Rights Reserved.