Minnesota

BOOKS: A Conversation With Author V.E. Schwab

Published

2 months ago

March 19, 2025

BOOKS: A Conversation With Author V.E. Schwab

Victoria (V.E.) Schwab is a #1 New York Times best-selling fantasy author of more than 20 books. In this interview with a Minnesota high school student, she shares her thoughts on how to handle the trials of creativity in a time when creative pursuits, especially by women, are diminished.

V.E. Schwab photo by Jenna Maurice

It is practically in the adolescent development rulebook for teenagers to have idols. For me, V.E. Schwab is one of those idols. I fell in love with her writing in middle school, when I read City of Ghosts. Schwab has a talent for making it feel as though the words you are reading were written just for you — like an intimate bedtime story. When I had the opportunity to interview her for the Minnesota Women’s Press, when Schwab was visiting Minneapolis, I wanted to hear what advice she had for aspiring female creatives (like myself).

Schwab is candid. At 37, she has had a successful career since selling her debut novel to Disney during college. . She told me that, like it or not, she has become a brand and it can be a struggle to adjust to the weight of social expectations that go along with that brand.

She was honest about the self-doubt that she faces, despite the success. “My self criticism gets really loud, really fast,” says Schwab. “My perfectionism is so steep that Addie LaRue almost didn’t get written because …I got to a fork in the road and I had to decide between [wanting to execute] a perfect idea and [executing what I considered] an imperfect reality.”

Perfectionism and being your own worst critic is tricky to navigate, she admits.. “‘If it can’t be perfect, it’s not worth doing at all’ is the worst mantra that you can have in anything — in sports, in arts. It’s not going to carry you. So I have to make peace. I have to remind myself that it’s not about writing the best book possible” — meaning, it is not about perfection, but about creating a piece of work you are proud of that executes a concept you were inspired to share.

We talked about dealing with criticism as well. She indicated that feedback is not supposed to be about your emotional response to it — positive or negative — but whose voices you value.

She explains that by weighing feedback equally from a wider audience, rather than close peers, criticism loses some of its power.

Schwab points out the variety of subjectivity in creative fields. Art will always be loved by some and not liked by others. To make something that is universally loved is not possible, and misses the point of creation in the first place. “Once you’ve had the privilege of receiving messages from people for whom your book was everything, it is very easy to let go of the people for whom it wasn’t.”

Schwab had to find the balance between “making art just to make art” and making art sustainable. She denounces the idea that if you engage in both business and art, you are less of an artist. She also rejects the nobility of the starving artist, and the prerequisite of depression or being a mad genius that she says are not necessary for creating good art. “The starving artist is a fun little concept we use in fiction, and it’s hell in reality,” she says.

Schwab says planning is immensely important to her writing process. She creates intricate outlines before writing a novel. These intensive planning periods take about a year per novel). She says it helps her work through all the kinks in a work before starting in earnest to write.

What I learned from our conversation is that, rather than trying plot holes when you’re already knee deep in the creative process, it helps her to work through all the hard stuff first. After that, you can fully commit to the flow of sentences, brush strokes, and chords.

The difficulty of creativity, Schwab adds, stems from our own minds. A key to working through anything, she suggests, is to cut tasks up into small chunks. “[Writing] is so consuming, it can be hard to realize that it’s actually just about putting words on paper. [My advice is to] make the work as small as possible. I sit down and think, ‘I’m writing this scene, I’m writing this page, I’m writing this chapter.’ Do whatever you need to do to make the work doable.”

Amelia Busse is a junior at Jefferson High School in Bloomington.

Excerpt

V.E. Schwab’s upcoming book, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil (on sale by Tor Books June 10, 2025) has been described as “Equal parts satisfying and unsettling … it’s really about hunger and rage and grief and our soul-deep need for connection.” The novel features three young women — from Santo Domingo de la Calzada in 1532, London in 1837, and Boston in 2019 — “their bodies planted in the same soil, their stories tangling like roots. One grows high, and one grows deep, and one grows wild. And all of them grow teeth.”

From page 282: “Standing there, halfway down the steps, the hope goes right out of Alice’s sails, because it’s obvious that this is another dead end. It’s a coffee shop — she can smell the beans roasting from the street — and she wants to sit down on the stop and cry, but she can’t even do that now without creating a scene. She should probably just turn around and walk the two miles back to campus, but she can’t bring herself to do it. Her legs are stuck, not the way they were back in the graveyard, but leaden, as if they’ve simply lost the will to listen to her. Maybe it’s the fact she’s come this far, and she has no other leads, or that this place feels familiar in a simple, human way, a nod to the girl she was before, the one who constantly found refuge in café corners, fingers curled around a mug of tea, or the fact she can still hear the music, spilling softly through the door.”

Details: veschwab.com

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Minnesota

Minnesota Timberwolves Set Franchise History But Want More

Published

16 hours ago

May 17, 2025

Press Room

Minnesota Timberwolves Set Franchise History But Want More

Rudy Gobert and Anthony Edwards helped Minnesota to tis second straight berth in the NBA West … More finals. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

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The Minnesota Timberwolves already have made franchise history. They are using that as a starting point.

“The stomach is not full,” center Rudy Gobert said. “Not at all. It’s just one step.”

The Timberwolves made the Western Conference finals for a team-record second consecutive season last week after finishing off the Stephen Curry-less Golden State Warriors in five games, giving them five days’ rest before meeting the Oklahoma City-Denver winner in the West finals that begin Tuesday.

The next step is to avenge a loss to Dallas in the West finals a year ago.

The T-Wolves’ repeat trip seemed almost inevitable once the Warriors lost Curry in their Game 1 victory. They won the final four games of the series by an average of almost 12 points.

“We were the better team,” Minnesota coach Chris Finch said. “We felt we were the better team. We just had to go out and play like it every night.”

The Wolves similarly punished the Los Angeles Lakers in the first round, winning four of five while outscoring LeBron James, Luka Doncic et al by an average of almost nine points a game. It was especially satisfying, inasmuch as Doncic was the ringleader in Dallas’ series win a year ago.

No. 6 seed Minnesota did not have home court advantage in either of its first two 2024 playoff series will not have it in any round this year.

A Denver series would be a rematch of the 2024 West semifinals, when the T-Wolves overcame a 15-point halftime deficit Denver for a 98-90 Game 7 victory.

The Wolves’ made history then, too. They had the largest the comeback in an NBA Game 7, and the series win seemed to solidify their status as a continuing title contender.

“It’s to make it to the (NBA) finals,” Jaden McDaniels said of the mission. “I think we’re super confident. We’re all together, being a good team, and we’re just ready for whoever we play next already. We just got to stay the course.”

Renewing the legacy of Kevin Garnett

In one way, these Wolves have taken the glory days of the Garnett Era one step further.

The Garnett-led teams of the late 1990-early 2000s made seven straight playoff appearances but only one trip to the conference finals, at the end of the run in 2004. These Wolves are on a four-season playoff run.

The current franchise turnaround began in 2020, with a succession timely of front office and player personnel decisions after an ugly stretch in which they had 15 losing seasons in 16 and played under nine full-time or interim coaches.

It began with a bit of a break in the 2020 NBA lottery, when they won the first overall pick despite the third-worst record in the league and a 14 percent chance at No. 1.

Anthony Edwards, prize of the 2020 draft

The Wolves took Anthony “Ant” Edwards, considered the consensus best player in the class, with first pick. He has become the face of the franchise and is closing in on being the new face of the NBA with his combination of skill and exuberance.

Edwards’ scoring average has increased in every season, to 27.6 points per game this year, fourth in the league.

Minnesota also acquired McDaniels in a three-team trade two days after the 2020 draft, and both he and Edwards have been cornerstones of the resurgence as McDaniels — always a long, athletic defender — has honed offensive game.

The front office makeover began shortly thereafter. Finch replace Ryan Saunders as head coach in February, 2021, and general manager Tim Connelly was hired from a similar position in Denver in May of 2022.

Less than two months later, Connelly acquired defensive presence Gobert, a decisive move that still resonates. While much of the league was trending small, Connelly added Gobert in a massive trade package that sent five players and four first-round draft picks to the Utah Jazz.

Gobert and all the right moves

Gobert, a four-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year, has averaged a double-double for the last nine seasons, and his length in the paint keeps opponents wary. He had nine blocked shots in the Warriors’ series and has averaged 2.4 blocks per season in his career.

Veteran point guard Michael Conley and guard Nickeil Alexander-Walker were acquired in another three-team deal involving Utah late in the 2023 season.

Connelly put the finishing touch on the roster over the summer, when he traded Karl-Anthony Towns to the New York Knicks for Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo Randle has averaged 23.9 points per game in the playoffs, five points above his regular-season average, and like Towns has the green light from three-point range.

With Edwards, DiVincenzo and 2019 draft pick Naz Reid doing much of the work, the Timberwolves made 37.7 percent of their three-point attempts, fourth in the league.

The Wolves got this far a year ago, and Finch has counseled them to remember what happened in the West finals then, when they lost all three three home games.

“It’s about staying level-headed,” Gobert said. “After a win like we had last year against Denver in Game 7, I felt like you get the whole world praising you. We weren’t mature enough to handle that yet.

“This year, we’re mature enough. I feel like we understand where we’re at. That’s the lesson. It’s about us and our approach. It’s not about who we face. It’s about mindset, our work, our attention to details. When our level of urgency is right, we know we can play with anyone.”

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Minnesota

Paige Bueckers endures a loss to the Lynx in her first WNBA game

Published

1 day ago

May 17, 2025

Press Room

Paige Bueckers endures a loss to the Lynx in her first WNBA game

She looked like she belonged on the floor, comfortable in her role, though she definitely noticed the step up in the speed of the game, the shorter nature of the shot clock. The pace of everything. “And then there’s a level of physicality, of course,” she said. “That’s a level up from college. The size at that [guard] position is a little bit different.”

She flashed some speed early, getting Lynx guard Karlie Samuelson on her heals before darting to the hoop. But the shot didn’t fall, something Bueckers was still thinking about long after the game.

“I should have made the first one,” she said.

She had four points, two boards and a block in the first quarter. She had only two turnovers in 30 minutes.

There was a moment, coming out of a timeout, when she and Napheesa Collier, both former UConn players and once teammates on a Team USA 3×3 team, talked on the court. Collier said she was just congratulating Bueckers on having arrived in the league. Bueckers called it an old, friendly UConn chat.

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NBA Western Conference Finals schedule unveiled

Published

2 days ago

May 16, 2025

Press Room

NBA Western Conference Finals schedule unveiled

The Minnesota Timberwolves don’t know who they’re playing in the Western Conference Finals yet, but they do know when the games will be played. The Wolves will start the series on the road in Game 1 on Tuesday night.

The Timberwolves await the winner of the Oklahoma City-Denver series. That series is tied at 3-3 with Game 7 being played on Sunday at Oklahoma City.

On Thursday night, the NBA announced the following schedule for Western Conference Finals (Best-of-Seven):