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Research the origins (Latin, Greek, biblical, or otherwise) of your first name and develop an alter ego for yourself based upon those origins. If your name is Alex, for example, whose origin, Alexandros, originates from the Greek root "to defend," your alter ego could be "The Defender." Free-write for twenty minutes from the perspective of that alter ego, writing about anything that comes to mind—and see what kind of patterns, ideas, or thoughts emerge.
In this video from the Daily Beast, literary agent and author Bill Clegg, who was one of four agents featured on the cover of our July/August 2011 issue, talks about shame, recovery from drug addiction, and his new memoir, NInety Days: A Memoir of Recovery. When you're done watching the video, listen to an audio clip of Clegg reading an excerpt from the book.
Jean Grau, author of the poetry collection Riverbend, is a storyteller in poetry and prose. A native of New Orleans, P&W has co-sponsored her readings at local nursing homes and public libraries since 2008. We asked her a few questions about her work with seniors. 
Why have you chosen to work with seniors?
My parents respected life in all its stages. I do, too. Seniors are special to me because of their experience, strength, and courage.
What are your reading dos and don’ts?
Wear bright, happy clothes. Make sure those with hearing problems are in the front. Move. Enjoy the poetry, along with the audience. Never forget readings are command performances for very special people. I avoid depressing subjects, except for the adventurous group at The Shepherd Center, whose motto is: "Bring it on. We can handle it."
How do you and your audience benefit from the live reading experience?
I benefit by feeling useful and helpful. They receive mental and emotional stimulation. Even the very sick enjoy the rhythm and soothing properties of poetry.
What are some of the most memorable moments in your work with seniors?
My second book is based on exhibits traveling to the New Orleans Museum of Art, including one that featured Fabergé eggs. On a beautiful spring day at the nursing home St. Anna's Residence, a small group had assembled in the front yard to hear me read these poems. As the activity director began to pass around foot-high color photos of the Fabergé eggs, loud “oohs” and “ahs” began. Attendants who had chosen not to attend the reading came running out, pushing their charges. There was such a commotion. Some workmen "discovered" they had to walk slowly by.
At another event, there was a paralyzed gentleman in intensive care. His head was in a brace, but his eyes were bright and alert as he listened intently. At the end of my presentation, he said in a clear, gallant voice: "Thank you for a great, an animated, flawless performance." He made me feel as though I were on the stage at Lincoln Center taking my bows.
What do you consider to be the value of literary programs for your community?
Everyone needs beauty. So many people tell me that in grade school they enjoyed poetry, but in high school they stopped. Readings reintroduce people to the intellectual stimulation, the emotional comfort, and the rhythm and music of poetry.
Photo: Jean Grau. Credit: Patricia Senentz.
Support for Readings/Workshops events in New Orleans is provided by an endowment established with generous contributions from the Poets & Writers Board of Directors and others. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.
In the latest installment of his hilarious Failed Writer Series, Yuvi Zalkow applies to writing a concept he (thinks he) learned from Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: It takes approximately ten thousand hours to master a particular craft. "Just focus on getting stuff written," he concludes, "and maybe not as much about achieving fame and fortune."
To accompany our May/June 2012 issue's feature "Winners on Winning," part of our special section on writing contests, we'll be posting a selection of mini-interviews with prize recipients on the benefits of their awards and what they learned from winning.
First up, we speak with poet and creative nonfiction writer Danielle Cadena Deulen, whose essay collection, The Riots, was published in 2011 by University of Georgia Press as part of the AWP Award Series in Creative Nonfiction. The book went on to win another award, the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award, which offers winners a paid reading tour of several colleges. Her debut on the literary scene, the poetry collection Lovely Asunder, which she'd shopped for five years, was also released in 2011 as part of a prize—the Miller Williams Arkansas Poetry Prize from University of Arkansas Press. Deulen discusses how her two awards in different genres gave her an edge in the job market and offers strategies for polishing a contest manuscript.
How did winning your latest honor, the AWP Award Series in Creative Nonfiction, change your career?
I believe The Riots was pivotal in helping me to gain my position as an assistant professor in the doctoral creative writing program at the University of Cincinnati. Obviously, publications enable one to establish themselves in tenure track positions in academia—there’s nothing unusual about that. However, I applied and was hired as a poet. My first book, Lovely Asunder, was published in the same year just a few months earlier, and landed me an interview for the position. During the interview process, The Riots was published, and as it turns out, the faculty member that had taught creative nonfiction in the program at UC had recently left for a position elsewhere, so they needed someone who might be able to teach creative nonfiction as well. This meant I had something extra to offer the department—important in such a tough job market! A more subtle benefit of winning the prize is that my work seems to have caught the attention of a few agents and editors at literary magazines I admire who’ve queried me for new essays.
Did the award have an effect on any decisions you made as a writer, on the path you chose to take in life or in your work?
Both prizes are recent, so it is still unforeseen how they might affect my future writing. However, in the responses I’ve received about The Riots, specifically, I have come to realize that there is a desire for innovative creative nonfiction. When I wrote The Riots I wasn’t thinking much about the audience for such a book and structured it in a way I found interesting—that is, I was working in forms that, at times, thwarted traditional ideas of prose, though were very familiar to me as a poet. As it turns out, other people found this interesting as well. As I move forward into new projects, in poetry as well as creative nonfiction, I will be thinking more actively about innovation: how structure might augment or illuminate my subjects.
What advice do you have for writers looking to contests as a way to get their work into the world?
This only applies to a manuscript that can be arranged in a variety of ways (poetry, essay, short fiction), but when submitting to contests, I believe it’s important to arrange your manuscript for a contest, not necessarily for the most artful arrangement. You have to keep two people in mind when arranging a manuscript for a contest: the contest judge and the contest screener. Be sure to research who the judge is for the contest you’re sending and read some of her work to determine if she might be aligned with what you’re attempting in your manuscript. If you decide that the judge might be a good reader for your work, go on to worry about the screener. The screener, who is likely a writer herself, will probably be reading your manuscript on a day that otherwise would have been a vacation from work and has a huge box of manuscripts beside her which she must get through relatively quickly in order to send something to the judge. This means your poor screener probably doesn’t have the time or energy to pour over your work; you must impress her immediately with something stylish and interesting. For this reason, you should place your best piece first, offer her variety (in tone, form, or subject matter) throughout the manuscript to keep her reading, and be sure to end the manuscript with a strong piece as well. Then, cross your fingers, hold your breath, and keep in mind that dumb luck also plays a large part in this process. Be patient with yourself.
In the video below, Deulen discusses the variations in her approach to writing poems and prose.
In her essay "Total Eclipse" from Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters (Harper Collins, 1982), Annie Dillard recalls traveling to the top of a mountain to witness a total solar eclipse. The darkness she discovered as the sun disappeared, in a world suddenly without light, was incomprehensible and terrifying, but also illuminating. "What I saw," she writes, "what I seemed to be standing in, was all the wrecked light that the memories of the dead could shed upon the living world." Write about a time when you disappeared into darkness—whether by your own choosing or not—and emerged again into the light, with a new understanding.
This video by Gavin Edwards is one of the entries in an international competition, sponsored by The Literary Platform, for the best animation of a 1993 audio recording of the late British author Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) predicting the invention of the e-book.
The Twittersphere heated up this afternoon after news broke that no Pulitzer Prize would be awarded for fiction published in 2011. The finalists for the award, also revealed today, were Denis Johnson for Train Dreams (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Karen Russell for Swamplandia! (Knopf), and the late David Foster Wallace for The Pale King (Little, Brown). No explanation has been given regarding the decision to withhold the prize, a move that last occurred in 1977, except that the choice was up to the Pulitzer board, and not this year's judges, Maureen Corrigan, Michael Cunningham, and Susan Larson.
On Twitter, Publishers Marketplace news editor Sara Weinman (@sarahw) inquired, where does the money go, if no prize is given? (Each winner receives ten thousand dollars.) Beatrice.com creator Ron Hogan (@RonHogan) bemoaned the perceived necessity of such a prize altogether, writing, "But, but, if we don't have a Pulitzer-winning novel, nobody will get the sales boost, and publishing will be DOOOOOMED! #waaah." Public relations maven Kimberly Burns (@kimberlyburnspr) offered a similar sentiment: "No #Pulitzer for fiction means go to an independent bookstore & ask a bookseller for a recommendation."
But amid the chatter over the Pulitzer in fiction, plenty of attention was sent the way of poetry prize recipient Tracy K. Smith, whose win for Life on Mars (Graywolf Press) came on, of all days, her birthday. The finalists in poetry, also published by small presses, were Forrest Gander for Core Samples From the World (New Directions) and Ron Padgett for How Long (Coffee House Press).
Stephen Greenblatt took the prize in general nonfiction for his National Book Award-winning The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (Norton). The finalists were Diane Ackerman for One Hundred Names For Love: A Stroke, a Marriage, and the Language of Healing (Norton) and Mara Hvistendahl for Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men (Public Affairs).
The Pulitzer Prizes are given annually for books published in the previous year by American authors.
In the video below, Smith discusses Life on Mars, including what Planet of the Apes and 2001: A Space Odyssey have to do with her winning collection.
Someone's been reading a little too much Sartre! Enjoy your obligatory cat Clip, in which a French feline articulates the pain of existence.
In this video the Associated Press offers a summary of yesterday's announcement that the Justice Department is suing five major publishers and on price-fixing charges. HarperCollins, Hachette, and Simon & Schuster settled the charges Wednesday, leaving Penguin, Macmillan, and Apple in what could be a protracted legal fight.
