Liz Shine teaches high school English, writes, edits, and coaches other writers from her home in Olympia, WA. When she begins to feel overwhelmed by it all, she simply looks up at Mount Rainier in the distance and gets back to work. If that fails, she heads to the ocean. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press. Her Substack Make Time is her gift to writers, like her, trying to magic time in this crazy, busy world. All of those posts are cross-posted on the blog here. You can see more of her writing at lizshine.com and find her on Instagram {@lizshine.writer} cooking, traveling, and in other ways seeking moments of awe.
She has been an active participant in communities of writers since the early 1990s. She’s learned that two things feel truly purpose-driven in life: writing and coaching other writers. In the in between (because one cannot be driving for a purpose every moment), she enjoys looking for wonder and connection. She is a lifelong yoga student, an enthusiastic walker along streets and trails, and an amateur gardener and vegetarian cook.
She lives in Olympia, WA. She believes in the power of practice and has been practicing writing since some time in the early 90s when she became an adult in the rain-soaked city of Aberdeen. Writing began with journaling, as a way to understand a confusing, sometimes violent coming-of-age. She writes mostly fiction, some nonfiction, and poetry, and holds an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writers Workshop. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press.
My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout My rating: 4 of 5 stars I needed a book like this. An uncomplicated book that in spite of how busy and ... Read more
“The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear Chris ... Read more
I’ve been thinking about the importance of patience this morning, how it is so necessary, but also something that has to be learned. Why, you ask, was I thinking about ... Read more
This week, I finished up another draft of a manuscript that is in nearing the publishing phase of the editing process, then finished a read-through of a first draft of ... Read more
I started this blog as a way to keep myself writing. It was the same kind of desperate attempt to build good habits that causes people to talk their significants ... Read more
Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine My rating: 4 of 5 stars My book group picked Citizen for the month of May. One unusually sunny ... Read more
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Red Dress Press publishes first author-designed book. Linger, Love. by Liz Shine is a collection of poems written and edited over twenty years. Placed together in this ... Read more
An Atlas of the Difficult World by Adrienne Rich My rating: 5 of 5 stars An Atlas of the Difficult World delivers, as Rich’s collections always do. Reading her work ... Read more
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy My rating: 5 of 5 stars If I’d pick up this book at the right time (less busy), I might have finished ... Read more