The Transformation of James Frey
Two years after publishing a brutal, unflinching account of his drug addiction, James Frey is showing signs of becoming a kinder, gentler writer in his second memoir, My Friend Leonard.
Article Archive
Articles from Poet & Writers Magazine include material from the print edition plus exclusive online-only material.
Small Press Points
Small Press Points highlights the happenings of the small press players. This issue features McSweeney’s Books, Believer Books, Tell Tale Press, and Wings Press.
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Literary MagNet
Literary MagNet chronicles the start-ups and closures, successes and failures, anniversaries and accolades, changes of editorship and special issues—in short, the news and trends—of literary magazines in America. This issue's MagNet features Poetry, the Southern Review, Swivel: The Nexus of Women and Wit, 6x6, Ninth Letter, and Black Clock.
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Amazon Expands Search Function
In case anyone was wondering, the four most frequently used words in T.S. Eliot’s 1943 collection Four Quartets are “time,” “past,” “fire,” and “end.” It is this kind of information that can be found by using one of several new features recently added to Amazon.com’s “Search Inside the Book” function, launched in October 2003.
Myths We Live By, But Shouldn't: A Writer's Guide to Reality
Perhaps because many writers and their adherents are poorly paid and often go unrecognized, they cultivate a variety of myths—some about the creative process, others about the profession itself—to justify what they do, to cheer themselves up, to inhabit a mystique.
Resuscitating Poetry Recitation
The National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation recently completed the pilot phase of a new program designed to raise the profile of poetry in high schools.
Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin
Page One features a sample of titles we think you'll want to explore. With this installment, we offer excerpts from Evening Ferry by Katherine Towler and Little Beauties by Kim Addonizio.
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No Translation Takers
Despite a $10,000 incentive from the Association of American Publishers to United States publishers willing to translate, publish, and promote contemporary Iranian fiction, no commercial houses have come forward since the initiative was announced in late 2004.
Q&A: C. Michael Curtis's Fiction Issues
C. Michael Curtis, a senior editor at the Atlantic Monthly, who is known not only for selecting award-winning short stories but also for his considerate and sensible letters of rejection to the thousands of submissions he’s read over the years, spoke about the magazine’s new approach to publishing fiction.
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The Contester: Who's Doing What to Keep Them Clean
Unfortunately, these days it is not the quality of the award-winning writing that gets people talking; it is the way in which contests are run and the manner in which winners are chosen—or not chosen, as the case may be—that attract attention.
Searching for Signs of Shakespeare
Most writers have heard the old saying about the Bard and the chimps: Gather 100 monkeys (or similarly hirsute primates) in a room, give them typewriters, and sooner or (more likely) later, they’ll deliver the complete works of Shakespeare. Nick Hoggard, a British computer programmer living in Sweden, has decided to put the theory—often attributed to Thomas Huxley, a 19th-century disciple of Charles Darwin—to the test.
Poets House and PSA Branch Out
Aided by a $260,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Poets House and the Poetry Society of America, two nonprofit literary organizations based in New York City, recently partnered to establish Branching Out: Poetry in the Twentieth Century.
When Editors Are Edited: Three Debut Authors on the Ultimate Role Reversal
Elizabeth Gaffney, Adrienne Miller, and Adrienne Brodeur—three high-profile magazine editors who recently added "debut novelist" to their resumés.
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Q&A: Inside Christopher McCabe's BEA
Christopher McCabe, the new manager of BEA, speaks directly about its purpose and sets the stage for the United States publishing industry’s biggest event.
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Literary MagNet
Literary MagNet chronicles the start-ups and closures, successes and failures, anniversaries and accolades, changes of editorship and special issues—in short, the news and trends—of literary magazines in America. This issue's MagNet features the Grove Review, the Sonora Review, Volt, Quick Fiction, and Barrelhouse.
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Filling the Best Seats in the House
Thanks to a growing trend in grassroots marketing and publicity, writers in the San Francisco Bay area are reading to packed houses—literally.
Never Let Me Go: A Profile of Kazuo Ishiguro
What if genetic cloning had become the defining science of the 20th century? The main characters of Kazuo Ishiguro's new novel contend with such a world—and its moral consequences.
Small Press Points
Small Press Points highlights the happenings of the small press players. This issue features City Lights Books, Verse Press, Wave Books, the Feminist Press, Ig Publishing, and Sarabande Books.
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Fear of Flight: Rewriting Short Fiction as a Novel
In April 2003, an agent sat down with me, pointed to my manuscript, and said the words I had been dreading: I think this should be a novel. I shuddered. I was no novelist. I was a minimalist, a votress of the goddess of gesture, a worshipper at the altar of the succinct. I was a short story writer.
Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin
Page One features a sample of titles we think you'll want to explore. With this installment, we offer excerpts from Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk, Bitter Milk by John McManus, and The Lake, The River & the Other Lake by Steve Amick.
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Imported Imprint to Close Its Doors
HarperCollins recently announced that it will close its United States imprint Fourth Estate.
The Written Image: Voices in Wartime
Voices in Wartime, a documentary about the experience of war as seen by soldiers, journalists, historians, and poets, featuring contemporary poets Chris Abani, Sam Hamill, Marie Howe, and Todd Swift, opened in select theaters nationwide last month.
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The End of the Story
To those who knew him through his work—and, if we are to believe the many tributes published in the past two months, to those who knew him intimately as well—Thompson was a strange and lovely amalgamation.
In Memory of Hunter S. Thompson: Postcard From Louisville, Kentucky
When I stepped off the plane in Aspen, Colorado, in June 1997, I found a 60-year-old Hunter S. Thompson waiting for me in a convertible Cadillac blasting Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky” at full volume. I was terrified; he was giddy. He was playing the song because it was a part of the soundtrack put together for the film version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas that was scheduled to hit theaters the following summer, and he could not have been happier.
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Literary MagNet
Literary MagNet chronicles the start-ups and closures, successes and failures, anniversaries and accolades, changes of editorship and special issues—in short, the news and trends—of literary magazines in America. This issue's MagNet features Diner, the Massachusetts Review, Night Train, the Women’s Review of Books, DoubleTake, the Oxford American, and Cranky Literary Journal.
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