How to Pick an MFA Program
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.
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Article Archive
Articles from Poet & Writers Magazine include material from the print edition plus exclusive online-only material.
Reimagining Place: Setting as Convergence
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.
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The Time Is Now: Writing Prompts and Exercises
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.
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The New Nonfiction 2025
Essays by debut authors Sarah Aziza, Erika J. Simpson, Julian Brave NoiseCat, Amanda Hess, and Samina Najmi as well as excerpts from their books.
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Looking for Love in a Time of Global Loneliness: A Profile of Kiran Desai
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.
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Haunted by My Almost-Book: The Afterlife of a Canceled Contract
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.
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Beyond Our Borders: Understanding Foreign Rights in Publishing
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.
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The Value of Our Work: What Writers Can Learn From the Harvard Business School
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.
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Toasting Eternity With Harryette Mullen
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.
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How to Write the Personal Essay for MFA Applications
Use your essay to answer the question: Devoting two years to writing can be a dream come true, but why is it your dream?
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How to Make the Most of Your Time in an MFA
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.”
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Q&A: Jenny Molberg of Ploughshares
The new editor in chief of Ploughshares discusses her vision for expanding the journal’s digital format and its community.
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The Written Image: A Radical Alteration, Women’s Studio Workshop
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.
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The Anthologist: A Compendium of Uncommon Collections
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.
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Small Press Points: Finishing Line Press
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.
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AI Reads (and Translates) Audiobooks
Audible has announced that machines will begin narrating its audiobooks and translating them into select languages.
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Writers Mix Movies and Memoir
A new nonfiction series from Ig Publishing encourages authors to reflect on the films that have transformed their lives.
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Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin
The first lines of a dozen noteworthy books, including Pick a Color by Souvankham Thammavongsa and Articulate: A Deaf Memoir of Voice by Rachel Kolb.
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How to Protect Your Time
Carrying a stroller down the subway steps is a good use of your time; doomscrolling and social media are not. Fight for time for the things you love and put your writing at the top of that list.
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How to Mingle at a Book Thing
Find your social buoys, practice your talking points, and if all else fails, return to the topic of shoes.
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How to Keep Hold of 120,000 Words—or, How to Work With a Manuscript in Word
Clever use of the software’s Headings tools can make even the most beastly manuscript easier to wrangle.
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How to Brew Good Coffee
Monthly deliveries of a perfect roast, strongly brewed, may be nearly as important as the companion who introduces them to you.
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How to Keep Writing When You’re Convinced Your Book Is a Disaster
When feeling beaten by your manuscript, come back to the page with humility and curiosity, and remember the ways that this work feeds you.
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How to Kill Your Darlings
Consider your cuts as a culling of the herd, and know that even writing which is omitted will leave its imprint on the book.
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How to Write When You’d Rather Be Online
Your internet obsessions can become your writing’s obsessions; allow those passions to animate your book.
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