Books Offer Lifeline in Incarceration

In the first letter Danny Harris wrote to Gary Fine from solitary confinement, he made what seemed to Fine like a simple request.

A New Chapter

The board is very pleased that Melissa accepted our invitation to lead the organization forward.a

A Life in Poetry

Our sixteenth annual look at debut poets

The Nitty-Gritty

HOW TO SEEK PERMISSIONS

The Time Is Now

Writing Prompts and Exercises

House Celebrates Broadside Lotus

After founding the Detroit-based Broadside Press in 1965, Dudley Randall wrote: “We (Africans in the United States) are a nation of twenty-two million souls, larger than Athens in the age of Pericles or England in the age of Elizabeth. There is no reason why we should not create and support a literature which will be to our own nation what those literatures were to theirs.”

MacDowell Tests Virtual Residencies

In the midst of COVID-19, the country’s oldest arts residency is reimagining itself after 113 years. In August, MacDowell launched its first Virtual MacDowell “residency,” a fully online program intended to support artists and foster a sense of connection during the time of social distancing.

Rumaan Alam – Leave the Expectations Behind

In his third novel, Leave the World Behind, published in october by Ecco, Rumaan Alam delivers, a propulsive narrative that speaks to the challenges and crises of the moment – racial injustice, environmental catastrophe, sheltering in place– while defying any expectations of what a novel written by a gay indian american man should be.

A Chicago Press for the People

On September 24, 2009, sixteen-year-old student Derrion Albert was beaten to death outside of Christian Fenger Academy High School, on the South Side of Chicago, in broad daylight. Though there were many witnesses, one of whom captured the attack on cell-phone video, no one stepped in to help. The footage of the murder went viral, highlighting the severity of the city’s youth violence epidemic, as Albert was the third teenager killed in Chicago that month.

Hashtag Highlights Anti-Black Bias

The month of June brought the continuation of daily protests around the United States, and the world, in recognition of violence against Black people and the importance of Black lives.

MFA Programs in the Time of COVID-19

Writers, teachers, and administrators plan for a new normal

The Art of the Author Photo

How to make a lasting image

OUR FIFTH ANNUAL 5 over 50

For the past five years we’ve dedicated this space to featuring five debut authors who have lived a good deal of life before publishing their first books. From the start our aim was to highlight not one path—not some mythical road, paved with youthful intentions, upon which so many “new and emerging” authors travel— but rather the countless individual routes, some considerably longer and circuitous than others, that lead to the publication of a debut book.

Reading in the Bardo

SEEKING COMFORT IN THE ABSENCE OF RITUAL

Order Out of Chaos

REVISING YOUR POETRY MANUSCRIPT

The Clifton House

On the ninth anniversary of poet Lucille Clifton’s death, her eldest daugh-ter, Sidney Clifton, felt a strong desire to be back in her family’s former home in Baltimore. She decided to call the owner, who told her the house had been put up for sale that very day, February 13, 2019. A reunion with the house seemed fated, and Sidney Clifton jumped at the chance to buy her childhood home. Soon the space will once again be filled with the energy and cheerful noise of artists at work and in conversation as the poet’s family develops the Clifton House as a place where new generations of artists can flourish.

THE CONFOUNDING INSISTENCE ON INNOCENCE

TEN YEARS AFTER HER DEBUT STORY COLLECTION, BEFORE YOU SUFFOCATE YOUR OWN FOOL SELF, MARKED HER ARRIVAL AS A BOLD NEW VOICE IN AMERICAN SHORT FICTION, DANIELLE EVANS RETURNS WITH HER SECOND, THE OFFICE OF HISTORICAL CORRECTIONS, A TIMELY RECKONING WITH, AMONG OTHER THINGS, AMERICA’S HISTORY OF RACIALIZED VIOLENCE.

Ayad Akhtar – Truth

In homeland elegies, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and novelist Ayad Akhtar blurs the line between fact and fiction in an attempt to reclaim the novel: "I think that reality has outpaced the capacity for fiction to speak to us about what we have become."

Writing in Spanish Elevates Academia

An estimated fifty-three million Spanish speakers live in the United States.

Nate Marshall – Transformation

In his second collection, Finna, Nate Marshall explores the failures and triumphs of language, the power of community, and abolition as a poetic praxis.

Cook's Activism at Philly Bookshop

The first time Jeannine A. Cook tried to open a bookstore, the building burned down just after she had signed the lease.

Telling #Stories

CAN SOCIAL MEDIA MAKE US BETTER WRITERS?

WORLD of WONDERS

IN HER NEW ESSAY COLLECTION, PUBLISHED BY MILKWEED EDITIONS IN SEPTEMBER, POET AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL TURNS HER CREATIVE POWERS OF ATTENTION, PLAY, OPENNESS, AND LOVE TO A WORLD OF MAGIC AND IMAGINATION OUTDOORS, CULTIVATING THE FAMILY GARDEN AS A LOVE LANGUAGE THAT CONNECTS ALL OF US.

Reviewers & Critics

ISMAIL MUHAMMAD OF THE BELIEVER

First Fiction 2020

In our twentieth annual roundup of the summer’s best debut fiction, Lauren Groff, Bryan Washington, Paul Lisicky, Sue Monk Kidd, and Sarah Gailey introduce first books by Ashleigh Bryant Phillips, Jean Kyoung Frazier, Corinne Manning, Megha Majumdar, and John Fram.

What We Found in Writing

ON THE evening Denver went into lockdown, I was fishing. The South Platte runs right through the city, and if you’re into urban fly-fishing, you can cast for huge carp among the wrecked grocery carts and old tires.

A Poetics Of Resilience

In her new book, Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir, former poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize Winner Natasha Trethewy contends with persistent trauma, both personal and cultural, going beyond witnessing to seek truth in all its complexity.

Kuipers Leads Poetry Northwest

In January the oldest literary magazine in the Pacific Northwest welcomed a new editor to the helm.

Save Indie Bookstores

Writers tend to have their favorite local book-stores. The one where the staff members are mostly poets.

Secrets Hidden in the Stacks

When University of Virginia (UVA) professor Andrew Stauffer sent his class to the library in the fall of 2009, he expected them to focus on the printed text of the books they brought back.