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Articles from Poet & Writers Magazine include material from the print edition plus exclusive online-only material.
With so many good books being published every month, some literary titles worth exploring can get lost in the stacks. Page One offers the first lines of a dozen recently released books, including Cathy Park Hong’s Engine Empire and Rajesh Parameswaran’s I Am an Executioner: Love Stories, as the starting point for a closer look at these new and noteworthy titles.
Organizers of writing contests are, perhaps not suprisingly, wary of publicizing details of their budgets, but the organizers of three contest programs offered to share the numbers behind their 2011 contests as part of contributing editor Michael Bourne's “The Economics of Competition,” which serves as the centerpiece of the current issue’s special section on the risks and rewards of writing contests.
The agent of Jami Attenberg, David Mitchell, Carolyn Parkhurst, Matthew Quick, and others offers guidance about publishing credits, MFA programs, and unagented submissions.
Administrators offer insight into the mystifying process of applying to a writing retreat by answering some common questions: How do residency juries weigh a work plan? Would your boss make a better reference than a former writing teacher? Is published or unpublished work more desirable in a writing sample?
In this issue we offer a look at the first four issues of the limited-edition magazine Lovely Daze on display February 20 through March 14 in Millennium Magazine, an exhibition of artist-magazines at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Sherman Alexie, winner of the other NBA, along with other poets and writers, shows off his jump shot in HooPalousa, a basketball tournament-cum-fund-raiser that aims to help create an endowment at the University of Idaho for a Native American MFA candidate.
Small Press Points highlights the innovative and can-do spirit of independent presses. This issue features the new Sacramento-based Nouvella, publisher of “collectible, one-of-a-kind mementos that will become dearer and dearer as the authors career progresses.”
In the midst of the political protests that were escalating in Wisconsin last winter, three library science majors at the University of Wisconsin devised the Library as Incubator Project, a website for writers, artists, and librarians to share their creations and ideas in one collaborative space.
Literary MagNet chronicles the start-ups and closures, successes and failures, anniversaries and accolades, changes of editorship and special issues—in short, the news and trends—of literary magazines. This issue’s MagNet features Digital Americana, Lumberyard, Sawmill, draft: a journal of process, and Poetry.
With so many good books being published every month, some literary titles worth exploring can get lost in the stacks. Page One offers the first lines of a dozen recently released books, including Esi Edugyan’s Half-Blood Blues and Adam Levin’s Hot Pink, as the starting point for a closer look at these new and noteworthy titles.
The late poet laureate Philip Levine spoke in early 2012 about his plans for the position and the range of influences on his work through the years.
Thanks to the accessibility of new digital tools offered by booksellers such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble, self-publishing is loosing its stigma and holds new promise for writers venturing out on their own.
In her memoir, Wild, published in March 2012, author Cheryl Strayed reveals all she lost following the death of her mother, and takes readers along on her three-month hike through the wilderness to find it again.
Immerse yourself in the music, films, art, and other points of inspiration that set off the spark for our twelve debut poets of 2011.
In the spirit of year-end best-of reading lists, we offer Joshua Bodwell’s Baker’s Dozen 2011 as a companion to his article “You Are What You Read: The Art of Inspired Reading Lists,” which appears in the January/February 2012 issue's special section on inspiration.
Small Press Points highlights the innovative and can-do spirit of independent presses. This issue features Dorothy, a publishing project, which aims to publish books “of slightly different aesthetic sensibilities but equal wonderfulness” written by women.
In this issue we offer a look at one of Kenneth Patchen’s “picture-poems,” currently on display in An Astonished Eye: The Art of Kenneth Patchen, the largest-ever exhibition of the genre-defying writer’s visual work, at the University of Rochester in New York.
Polly Becker, a Boston-based artist who in her formative years was influenced stylistically by artists such as Edward Gorey, Alphonse Mucha, and Aubrey Beardsley, speaks about the assemblages she created for the cover and our special section on inspiration.
Geoffrey Bartholomew, poet and head bartender at McSorley’s Old Ale House, New York City’s famous saloon, reveals how he sold five thousand copies of his self-published poetry collection while pushing pints from behind the bar.
Literary MagNet chronicles the start-ups and closures, successes and failures, anniversaries and accolades, changes of editorship and special issues—in short, the news and trends—of literary magazines. This issue’s MagNet features New World Writing, Transition, Asymptote, the White Review, Granta, the Dark Horse, and Versal.
In this regular feature, we offer a few suggestions for podcasts, apps, web tools, newsletters, museum shows, and gallery openings: a medley of literary curiosities for readers and writers on a budget.
With so many good books being published every month, some literary titles worth exploring can get lost in the stacks. Page One offers the first lines of a dozen recently released books, including Ben Marcus’s The Flame Alphabet and Amy Newman’s Dear Editor, as the starting point for a closer look at these new and noteworthy titles.
After making a name for itself in independent-press circles with its stylish, smart books of fiction, children’s literature, and food writing, the fourteen-year-old San Francisco–based outfit McSweeney’s is starting its first poetry imprint.
For nearly a century, the ampersand has been a key feature of certain strands of American poetry. To understand its history in the genre—and the role it plays for contemporary poets—one must return to the character’s origins.
The Grub Street literary center has created a long-form fiction class that might offer a cure for the novel-writing anxiety that the traditionally story-centric MFA workshop isn’t equipped to resolve.
