Current Projects
The Fox Whisperer of Stark’s Ferry
Learn more about Leah’s latest YA novel, The Fox Whisperer of Stark’s Ferry.
Untitled Novel Project
Based on Leah’s 2006 Three Day Novel Contest entry titled “Lost & Found,” this story pits 8-year-old Nicholas against monsters — both real and imagined — and the haunting nature of his parent’s secrets.
Past Projects
Gray
Written between 2003 and 2005, this is the much-anticipated debut novel from Leah B. Newman. Well, except that her publisher went under and it never made it to print. It did get an enticing blurb, though:
Seventeen-year-old Grace danced in an endless circle of uncertainty, trapped between her sheltered childhood and life as an adult.
Her grandfather and his only son built her two-story slat board house long before Grace was ever thought of, and its thick, insulated walls and long oak beams were sure to survive long after her memory of them faded. An old sign advertising horse shoeing hung from a rusty post out front of the home, the only remaining relic of a pre-depression business owned by her family.
But by this time there weren’t any horses in town. There were many heads of sheep and cattle, and the rough roads leading out of town were often overrun with chickens, but the last horse had long been gone from Hinklesburg, West Virginia. Now Chevrolets and Fords fought with trains and miners and lost lunch wrappings for space on the narrow streets.
Post-war America was prospering, wallowing in the glory of the years between WWII and the beginning of the Cold War. Grace’s rural mining town, however, was in a precarious position. Its mines were running short of the simple black rock that built it.
Grace, too, sat on the edge of change — forced to learn the difference in fate and desire, education and intelligence, youth and maturity, and ultimately, to face the impossible gray abyss between black and white.
Chasing the Race
This fast-paced racing-themed short story was published as part of an anthology in 2004. It is currently out of print.
A Life at Home
First produced in 1998, A Life at Home won several awards for up-and-coming playwright Leah B. Newman before she graduated from high school. This included being named as a Georgia Governor’s Honors finalist, recognized in the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts Young Arts program, and named one of NFAA’s Outstanding Young Artists in the southeast.
The one-act drama was published in 1999, and is available for purchase and production by high schools, church groups and theater companies.
leahbnewman.com 