I Just Published a Book: Why Am I Depressed?

A debut memoirist speaks up about post-publication blues and offers some suggestions for how to cure them.
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Articles from Poet & Writers Magazine include material from the print edition plus exclusive online-only material.
A debut memoirist speaks up about post-publication blues and offers some suggestions for how to cure them.
“I don’t trust any readers! And readers shouldn’t trust any writers. We’re all scoundrels, down to the last.” —Kai Cheng Thom, author of I Hope We Choose Love
“In college I had a fiction teacher tell me to make every sentence so good that the reader would have to read the next one. So basic and obvious but I needed to hear it.” —Jami Attenberg, author of All This Could Be Yours
“I sometimes wish the writing process for me was faster, but things need to percolate in their own time.” —Mimi Lok, author of Last of Her Name
“Read like your work depends on it. It does.” —Adrienne Brodeur, author of Wild Game
The legendary author of Slaughterhouse-Five explores some of the fundamental questions facing aspiring writers.
On October 7, Aracelis Girmay and U.S. poet laureate Joy Harjo read from recent work at the 92nd Street Y.
Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk and Austrian writer Peter Handke have won Nobel Prizes in literature.
Reginald Dwayne Betts, whose latest poetry collection, Felon, is out now from Norton, sits down with poet and activist Mahogany L. Browne for a conversation about political poetry and the realities of the U.S. prison system.
Heaven’s Vault, a video game by inkle, requires players to translate the runes of an ancient language.
Unnamed Press, an L.A.–based press, aims to publish story-driven books by underrepresented or marginalized voices.
A narrative medicine program at the University of Wisconsin in Madison helps doctors care for themselves and others through storytelling.
The first lines of a dozen noteworthy books, including Grand Union by Zadie Smith and Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout.
Poet and journalist Alissa Quart is bringing documentary poetry to major media outlets.
In a tiny bookshop in London, writer A. N. Devers spotlights women’s writing by only stocking rare books and modern first editions by female authors.
Carlos Lozada, a Pulitzer Prize–winning critic at the Washington Post, on his reading process, the role of social media in his work, and more.
In our fourth annual installment of this series, five debut authors over the age of fifty—Julie Langsdorf, Valencia Robin, Timothy Brandoff, Margaret Renkl, and Peter Kaldheim—share excerpts from their first books.
The author on five journals that published pieces from her story collection, Moon Trees and Other Orphans.
Carl Phillips, the longtime judge of the Yale Younger Poets prize and the editor of the anthology Firsts: 100 Years of Yale Younger Poets, on how the prize has evolved during the past century.
A round-up of four new anthologies, including Burn It Down: Women Writing About Anger edited by Lilly Dancyger.
Follow three Philadelphia writers as they join a community of more than three hundred thousand writers participating in NaNoWriMo, a challenge to write a fifty-thousand-word novel during the month of November.
“The process of writing a memoir can swallow you whole if you aren’t careful.” —Saeed Jones, author of How We Fight For Our Lives.
“Maybe we are all just a bit frazzled with the state of the world today, but it’s not always easy to sit and focus. When I do find time to write, it’s like I’m back to myself. I’m back home.” —Kimberly Reyes, author of Running to Stand Still
Friends gathered at the 92nd Street Y on the evening of September 23 to pay tribute to the esteemed poet Mary Oliver, who died in January at the age of eighty-three.
“I didn’t always feel like writing but I still made myself sit down and do it. I practiced discipline and worked towards inspiration.” —Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King