On the Morning Media Menu today, Maran shared writing advice she learned while getting responses from Isabel Allende, David Baldacci, Jennifer Egan, Sebastian Junger and Ann Patchett.

Press play below to listen to the whole interview on SoundCloud. We’ve collected a few quotes from the interview as well…

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Author and Restrepo director Tim Hetherington was killed while reporting in Libya.

Here’s more about his literary work: “His project Healing Sport was published by Thames and Hudson as part of group project Tales of a Globalizing World (Thames & Hudson 2003). Long Story Bit By Bit:Liberia Retold (Umbrage Editions 2009) narrates recent Liberian history by drawing on images and interviews made over a five year period. A new book, Infidel (Chris Boot Ltd 2010), about a group of US soldiers in Afghanistan, continues the examination of young men and conflict.”

In the documentary trailer embedded above (with NSFW language), Hetherington teamed up with journalist and author Sebastian Junger to report in one of the deadliest war zones on earth. Together, they created Restrepo–the winner of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival documentary grand jury prize.

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The book will accompany an upcoming documentary the author worked on with British photographer Tim Hetherington in one of the deadliest war zones on earth. Together, they created Restrepo–the winner of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival documentary grand jury prize. Watch the unsettling trailer here.

Last week Details magazine interviewed Junger about his book. Here’s an excerpt: “I had a nightmare, and I put it in the book. As a journalist, I had such trepidation about putting a dream in a reported book, but then I realized that we are all having nightmares out here, this is what it’s about, so go for it … When I was writing The Perfect Storm, it was a journalistic story about a town that I cared about, but it wasn’t personal in that sense. This was. I started dreaming about it every night–literally every night–while I was writing. Once I reached that level of emotional connectedness to the topic, I started writing very, very well.”

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In the documentary trailer embedded above (with NSFW language), journalist and author Sebastian Junger joined British photographer Tim Hetherington in one of the deadliest war zones on earth. Together, they created Restrepo–the winner of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival documentary grand jury prize.

Thompson on Hollywood reports that National Geographic Films will bring Restrepo to theaters in July. Junger turned the material into an upcoming book entitled War. It is scheduled for a May 11th release.

Here’s more from the article: “Hetherington and Junger visited the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan ten times, five each and shot 150 hours of footage. The two men held their own with a battle company of 15 U.S. soldiers in the toughest Afghanistan mountain terrain … The footage shows a platoon of army soldiers under almost constant attack from Taliban fighters in the mountains who they never see–until one horrific campaign … You’ve never seen fighting like this. Ever.”

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Just because it’s difficult to find books that boys want to read, doesn’t mean there aren’t initiatives to create a new market for them. So posits the Boston Globe’s David Mehegan in profiling Steven D. Hill and Peggy Hogan, whose newly founded Flying Point Press attempts to disprove conventional wisdom that boys aged 10 to 15 won’t read non-fiction.

They had noticed there’s a strong nonfiction market for men — adventure books such as Sebastian Junger‘s “A Perfect Storm” or Jon Krakauer‘s “Into Thin Air.” But, said Hill, “it was clear that publishers were ignoring adventure, history, and nonfiction for 10-to-15-year-old boys.” Hogan said, “If you look at what men read, there was no springboard for boys. If they want to read the kind of books they will read as adults, there is nothing to lead them into that area.” But then Hill remembered the 1950s and 1960s- era Landmark Books, which were narrative non-fiction, mostly history and biography. With most long out of print, Hill decided to bring them back, with funding aid from Sterling Publishing.

“A single book is not going to make a difference,” said Hogan, 65, “but a series for children is a powerful concept, as it was with Landmark. The idea is to have a list of all the titles in each book, so that if you like one, you know you can find something similar.” But many are skeptical the idea will work. “I don’t do well with nonfiction of any type, even for girls,” said Ellen Richmond, owner of the Children’s Book Cellar in Waterville, Maine. Other booksellers said much the same, but some remain optimistic. “Boys are a tougher audience to reach,” said Portsmouth, NH librarian Michael Sullivan. “But when you give them books they like, they react as well as girls do. Everybody loves a good story.”

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