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Articles from Poet & Writers Magazine include material from the print edition plus exclusive online-only material.
“All you can do is pay attention to the process, the practice, and see what it does to you, what it does to the people around you, what it does to your dear readers.” —Latif Askia Ba, author of The Choreic Period
“Take your time. And indulge in the messiness, the privacy, the anxieties of the writing process.” —Aria Aber, author of Good Girl
Writer and scholar Rebecca Rainof offers advice on how to write about family by considering lessons learned over a lifetime.
“Your e-mails are daily writings. Your grocery lists; your text messages; your poetry magnets on the fridge; your annotations in the margins of your books.” —Kayleb Rae Candrilli, author of Winter of Worship
Writer and scholar Rebecca Rainof offers advice on how to write about family by imagining fictive dialogues.
Ten authors answer the question: What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received?
The author of Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America (Little A, 2021) offers advice on how to make a personal narrative resonate with the wider world.
Taking inspiration from a creature of the summer, a seasoned writer suggests a few approaches to stimulate, refresh, and gather your thoughts for the next stage of writing and spark your imagination with play.
What does it mean to truly let loose as a writer? The author of I’m Not Hungry but I Could Eat urges us to lean into the fire and pressure head-on, to let everything out on the page and offer it up to the world.
A novelist shares the way a writer builds intimacy between readers and characters, and how the peculiar glow of the refrigerator light brings warmth to an audience of one.
Inspired by the bioluminescence of the anglerfish, the author of Something New Under the Sun encourages writers to furnish their own light and plumb the unknown depths of their text with the hunger of a deep-sea predator.
Writing and revising often seem to hinge on bringing new possibilities into focus. A poet considers the camera obscura as a metaphor for how an inversion of the light can transform and attune us to the moment.
Many things bring light; some bring just enough to keep the monsters at bay. When ideal circumstances are scarce, focus on the dim, constant light that helps you get the work done, even if it comes from an unusual source.
When “normal” fails, embrace the strangeness and possibility the night can provide. A renowned fiction writer recounts the uncommon delight of inviting others to join her in writing under the moon.
When it seems impossible to find a way into writing, a robust community can be a beam of light in the darkness. The author of Ghost Hour describes the ways that a new writers group helped rekindle and guide her creative practice.
Ten debut poets who published in 2024 generously share the inspiration, advice, and writers block remedies that have sustained them through their literary journeys.
Since 2005, Poets & Writers Magazine has highlighted emerging poets in an annual feature on first poetry books. In celebration, we gathered a list of the 222 poets and their debut collections that have graced our pages.
Workshop isn’t about fixing, but building together—instead of giving prescriptive suggestions on a piece, a widely published poet recommends offering specific notes as an invitation to explore further possibilities.
Every poetry collection has its “maybes” and “almosts,” the poems that didn’t make it to publication. A debut poet considers the poems that haunt a book from the outside.
The author of Border Less describes how audience responses to her debut novel’s play with form led her to wonder about the greater implications of the Western fixation on realism as the accepted novel style.
Write a poem about the pains and pleasures of cold weather, a short story that brings together an unexpected series of events, or an essay that contemplates companionship.
The new executive director of Words Without Borders, Elisabeth Jaquette, speaks on translation as an art and a profession as well as her goals to spotlight new global voices and help set best practices in the field.
Christine Sun Kim’s art practice uniquely melds different mediums with ASL to address her experience as a Deaf individual in a hearing-centric world, prompting viewers to reflect on accessibility and ableist exclusion.
The author of The Dreamcatcher in the Wry spotlights journals and platforms that have published her work and appreciate her wry sense of humor, including the Belladonna and Hunger Mountain.
Publishing around half a dozen novellas, poetry collections, and graphic novels yearly, Driftwood Press resists narrowing itself to a specific niche; instead, the press is defined by its diversity in stories, styles, and perspectives.
