What are you working on? : Dashka Slater

Just posted to the "What are you working on?" series of interviews with writers about their works in progress, Dashka Slater, who is bringing out two children's books this year, and whose charming novel The Wishing Box was set before, during and after the 1989 earthquake in Northern California.

She's now working on a short story collection:

In my life as a writer, I have written poetry, a novel, magazine articles, and picture books, and I find short stories to be the single most difficult genre I have ever attempted. There's just no room for error. It's like building a bridge out of toothpicks -- one false move and the whole thing collapses. There was one story that I wrote five times from top to bottom before I finally hit upon a way to tell it.

Dashka Slater, writers, Oakland writers