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Weekly Update

Our free weekly e-newsletter provides links to the newest online content from Poets & Writers Magazine, plus highlights from our blogs, writing contest deadlines, job listings, and more.

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Daily News

Writing Prompts

  • Opening Line
    Fiction
    January 14 marked the fifty-ninth anniversary of the original publication of Sylvia Plath’s...
  • Influential
    Poetry
    “She is the speed of darkness— / witness her mystery, not her gown,” writes Christopher Gilbert...
  • Relics
    Creative Nonfiction
    “I did not want to die without being married to her, for forty-nine or seventy-nine or...

Literary Events Calendar

Readings & Workshops

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Alla Abdulla-Matta presents her work at the Ninth Annual Connecting Cultures Reading. The event took place at the Center for Book Arts in New York, New York on May 15, 2018. (Credit: Margarita Corporan)
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Poet Juan Delgado at the Cholla Needles Monthly Reading. The event took place at Space Cowboy Books in Joshua Tree, California on October 7, 2018. (Credit: Bob DeLoyd)
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Marty Carrera at the Seventeenth Annual Intergenerational Reading. The event took place at Barnes & Noble Union Square in New York, New York on June 23, 2018. (Credit: Margarita Corporan)

Poets & Writers Theater

“Believe it or not, lyric is all about time management.” Educator and former poet laureate of Utah Katharine Coles discusses how time is related to lyric, rhyme, and metaphor in the writing of poetry in this virtual 2021 TEDxParkCityWomen lecture... more

G&A: The Contest Blog

Upcoming Contest Deadlines
Posted by Prize Reporter on 1.14.22
Close out the first month of the new year by applying to contests with deadlines of January 30 or January 31. Eight of these opportunities are for fiction writers looking to submit anything from a short story to a... more

Most Recent Items

Magazine
A Freeing Space: Our Seventeenth Annual Look at Debut Poets
by Dana Isokawa | Special Section 12.15.21

Ten debut poets who published in 2021, including Threa Almontaser and Shangyang Fang, discuss the inspiration for their books, their writers block remedies, and advice for other poets.

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Magazine
Ten Questions for Weike Wang
by Staff | Ten Questions 1.18.22

“I will miss thinking about Joan and her world every second of every day.” —Weike Wang, author of Joan Is Okay

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agents & editors recommend
Barbara Jones of Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency
1.19.21
I worked as an editor for three decades (first in magazines, then in books); I’ve been a literary agent for all of four months. But in the spirit of sharing from one agent’s “beginner’s mind,” here is something I’ve noticed: Agents have much more...”
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Magazine
The Art of Revision: Black Box
by Peter Ho Davies | Online Exclusive 10.13.21

An excerpt from The Art of Revision: The Last Word by Peter Ho Davies, published in November 2021 by Graywolf Press. 

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Writers recommend
Matthew Olzmann
1.12.22
“Poets should watch This Is Spinal Tap more often. Watching it again after having not seen it for a couple of decades, I was struck by how much fun those guys were having. ‘Fun’ isn’t a word many people associate with writing poems. But many...”
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Magazine
How to Keep Going
by Crystal Hana Kim | Special Section 12.15.21

The author recalls being pregnant in the early days of the pandemic and asks: How we can continue to create in times of uncertainty? 

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Magazine
Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin
by Staff | News and Trends 12.15.21

The first lines of a dozen noteworthy books, including Manifesto: On Never Giving Up by Bernardine Evaristo and To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara.

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Magazine
Literary MagNet: Hasanthika Sirisena
by Dana Isokawa | News and Trends 12.15.21

The author reflects on five journals that published essays from their debut collection, Dark Tourist. 

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Magazine
A Place Built by Poets for Poets
by Jessica Kashiwabara | News and Trends 12.15.21

After collecting poetry books to lend to students, poet and educator Hiram Sims opened the Sims Poetry Library in Los Angeles. Today the library boasts a collection of over six thousand books and serves as a home base for poets in the community...

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Classifieds

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Jobs for Writers

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