Collier Nogues: Pushing your Material Around
Audre Lorde wrote, decades ago, that “there are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.” I’ve always loved that quote,...
Katie Cortese: Flash Fiction: A World in the Palm of Your Hand
As a kid, I collected snow globes. As many as I could get my hands on. The weirder the better. One was a red kaleidoscope with the snowy...
Erica Dawson: Moses Moment
It’s the moment when you’re finishing up the first draft and you’re second-guessing every decision you’re made so far. Will readers...
Lisa Ampleman: The Self and Not / Not the Self: The Use of the Personal in Lyric Poetry
The Self and Not: As I wrote the poems in my first collection, Full Cry, over eight years or so, I often drew from the well of what I was...
Sarah Vap: The Perfect Beginning: A Notebook and Daydreaming and Strange Things Together
Maybe the most important part of writing for me has been learning to trust the part of myself that wants to put strange things together....
Leigh Stein: How to Read Your Work Aloud
Today is August 9, 2012, and so far this year I have done 37 public readings, in 14 cities around the country. Giving public readings is...
Todd Fredson: Caesuras and White Space: Room for the Reader
“[F]or I was not aware of the importance of health, I mean the absolute necessity of having a healthy body to avoid disaster in the...
W. Todd Kaneko: The Things You Do--Character Codes of Conduct in Fiction
An audience needs to be able to understand and sympathize with the characters they meet in stories. As such, characters often adhere to a...
Eric Sasson: Say What You Need To, And No More
Say What You Need To, And No More Eric Sasson Very often new (and sometimes not-so-new) writers forget how important it is to create the...
