Ten Questions for Austyn Wohlers

“[Y]ou can’t edit something into being good before getting it down.” —Austyn Wohlers, author of Hothouse Bloom
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Articles from Poet & Writers Magazine include material from the print edition plus exclusive online-only material.
“[Y]ou can’t edit something into being good before getting it down.” —Austyn Wohlers, author of Hothouse Bloom
The author of Indigo (Copper Canyon Press, 2020) recommends writers use coding when trying to describe loss.
Literary and arts organizations are left reeling after budget cuts at the NEA, NEH, and IMLS.
The new editor in chief of Ploughshares discusses her vision for expanding the journal’s digital format and its community.
After an unexpected split from her longtime agent, an author reconnects with her sense of calling and remembers who she writes for: herself.
An executive editor at Scribner, previously a senior editor at Grove Atlantic, Katie Raissian talks about learning to be fearless, what grabs her in a query, and the art of publishing books.
A novelist explores the craft of imagining a fictional setting based on a real-world location that holds a capacity for convergence, a place where many threads intersect and many stories are born.
Faculty, program type, format, and size are just a few of factors to consider when finding a school that suits who you are as a writer.
An author who worked for years as a scribe at the Harvard Business School shares the lessons she learned that can be applied to writing, most notably: Believe that what you do is valuable.
Write a sparrow poem, a story about the loss of self during a period of social upheaval, or a series of vignettes that look back on several past jobs you’ve had.
Essays by debut authors Sarah Aziza, Erika J. Simpson, Julian Brave NoiseCat, Amanda Hess, and Samina Najmi as well as excerpts from their books.
In her third novel, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, which comes out nearly twenty years after her Booker Prize–winning The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai considers loneliness in all its states of loss and heartache, possibility and promise, through the lens of a love story.
A poet who canceled the contract for her debut collection describes the difficult years-long process of scrubbing the internet of erroneous information about her book.
An agent with twenty years of experience selling foreign rights on both sides of the Atlantic unpacks what can appear to be a complicated and unfamiliar aspect of book publishing.
With Regaining Unconsciousness, her first poetry collection in twelve years, Harryette Mullen sounds an alarm for our uncertain future with a poetics both urgent and playful.
Use your essay to answer the question: Devoting two years to writing can be a dream come true, but why is it your dream?
Time well-spent in grad school means “learning to labor in language in such a way that you’ve made yourself worthy of the next labor.”
Clever use of the software’s Headings tools can make even the most beastly manuscript easier to wrangle.
A writing degree’s worth lies in early readers met, sacred hours at the desk, life-changing books, and deep community.
A new exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts features artists books with innovative designs that honor familial pasts and document history.
An introduction to three new anthologies, including The People’s Project: Poems, Essays, and Art for Looking Forward and Both/And: Essays by Trans and Gender-Nonconforming Writers of Color.
Based in Georgetown, Kentucky, Finishing Line Press publishes around three hundred titles each year and runs a chapbook competition celebrating writers who are marginalized from mainstream publishing.
Audible has announced that machines will begin narrating its audiobooks and translating them into select languages.
A new nonfiction series from Ig Publishing encourages authors to reflect on the films that have transformed their lives.