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Articles from Poet & Writers Magazine include material from the print edition plus exclusive online-only material.
Compose a poem based on close observations of your immediate surroundings, vignettes about human and nonhuman characters that reveal multiple points of view, or a lyric essay braiding early memories with stories passed down from ancestors.
For one nonfiction writer with autism and ADHD, perfectionism threatens to “harden the creative process into something punitive.” A sustainable creative practice means regulating intensity, not trying to outrun it.
Create a poem that grows out of an imagined universe, a story set in a haunted home, or a memoiristic account that chronicles an important friendship with someone you have worked with professionally.
An author explores the numerous benefits of generative writing, a collaborative writing method that can help counter the ruthless editor within and encourage boldness and joy in its place.
A poet considers the creative rewards of setting text to a composer’s music and suggests how any writer might take the leap from page to song.
A fiction writer considers how long, or short, any given narrative needs to be, and in the process finds a new appreciation for an often-neglected form: the novella.
Calling on June Jordan and E. L. Doctorow, Emily Dickinson and Tupac Shakur, an acclaimed poet and nonfiction writer parses how the past is ever-present, and how our setting becomes our writing.
Write a poem that explores memories of the end of summer, a story that features a character working on a project about a person’s biography, or a travel journal with poetic observations of a singular moment or image in time.
While writing a novel containing themes of sexual abuse, an author worked hard to earn and sustain her readers’ trust, which was reciprocated by readers in the form of unexpected, personal disclosures at launch events.
A celebrated memoirist considers why putting pen to paper can be so emotionally taxing—and what the rewards are when we persist.
Write a poem using a variety of sounds to convey complex feelings, a story in which the setting reveals the mindset of a character, or a portrait of your life using overheard, seen, or invented language as it occurs throughout your day.
A novelist explores the decision to name real places in fiction, the way maps circumscribe those places, how locales heavily defined by tourism are susceptible to those projections, and what it means to push against those expectations.
Write a series of formal poems to reflect on a complicated aspect of your life, a story in which you pose as the recipient of letters from a nonhuman character, or a hybrid essay that incorporates elements of memoir and criticism.
The author of Last Psalm at Sea Level considers the different shapes of language through a reflection on curating Deaf art and signed literature for programming at the Guggenheim Museum.
When a memoirist studies her manuscript for patterns in theme and style, the symmetries she cultivates bring powerful shape to her book.
The acclaimed fiction writer, essayist, comic book writer, and screenwriter cautions against growing too rigid in your practice and suggests kicking down some doors and using writing as a multi-tool.
Write a poem that reflects on the passing of time, a story that uses anonymity to build themes of disappearance and loneliness, or a personal essay about your relationship to a specific technology.
The acclaimed fiction writer unpacks the art of the longer short story—a form with space for ambitious plot and rich characterization, with the pressure and punch of concision.
Begin writing a series of poems in the epic tradition, a story with a frenetic narrative voice, or short reflections on animals.
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.
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.
After an unexpected split from her longtime agent, an author reconnects with her sense of calling and remembers who she writes for: herself.
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.
Writing a book is a daunting challenge—but the texts we know and love can help. A nonfiction writer describes how a methodically organized spreadsheet of favorite quotes aided her journey from proposal to finished memoir.
A Nigerian professor and fiction writer describes how a new place like Starkville, Mississippi, becomes a home and how the color, texture, and form of her surroundings make their way into her storytelling.
