Cabin Fever: My Own Private Walden Pond
From Thoreau to Arthur Miller for centuries writers have been escaping to personal cabins—some even hand built by the writers themselves—for the solitude necessary to slip inward.
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Article Archive
Articles from Poet & Writers Magazine include material from the print edition plus exclusive online-only material.
Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin
In celebration of National Poetry Month, we present this all-poetry edition of Page One, featuring excerpts from Black Lab by David Young and Drive: The First Quartet by Lorna Dee Cervante.
NEA Responds to "Reading at Risk"
In response to its 2004 report "Reading at Risk," which found that significantly fewer people read serious literature now than in years past, the National Endowment for the Arts recently launched an ambitious program designed to reverse the trend.
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The Edward F. Albee Foundation: The Barn at the End of the World
The Edward F. Albee Foundation in Montauk, New York, gives writers room to write—in one of the most inspiring barns in the country.
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The Written Image: "Categories"
In an effort to promote scientific literacy, foster an appreciation of the humanities, and encourage readers to make "informed and imaginative connections" between the sciences and the arts, New York City–based Vernacular Press recently launched a series of books titled "Categories."
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 Fairy Tale Review, Alimentum, Lost, Dislocate, Tameme, Double Change, Storie, and Terra Incognita.
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Four-Legged Fiction
It used to be that when a writer bestowed human qualities on an animal—the ability to speak, for instance—it almost always meant trouble. Today, animal lit is broader in scope and occasionally even benevolent in nature.
Small Press Points
Small Press Points highlights the happenings of the small press players. This issue features Hourglass Books, Hanging Loose Press, and Chiasmus Press.
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Comic Adventure Takes Poetic Form
Among the many poetry collections that have been published in the weeks leading up to National Poetry Month, Jim and Dave Defeat the Masked Man, a collaborative book of sestinas by James Cummins and David Lehman released by Soft Skull Press in February, features perhaps the most prestigious and, simultaneously, zany cast of characters to appear in a book of poems since Alan Kaufman's Outlaw Bible of American Poetry was published by Thunder's Mouth Press seven years ago.
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Q&A: Chang Signals New Era in Iowa
On the eve of her departure from Somerville, Massachusetts, for Iowa City, Lan Samantha Chang spoke about her new role as the leader of the country's oldest creative writing program.
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An Interview With Fiction Writer Jay McInerney
Perhaps no single book details the excesses of the 1980s—in particular the debauchery of the New York City social scene—better than Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City (Vintage Books, 1984). The author’s commercially successful debut novel was adapted into a movie, starring Michael J. Fox and Keifer Sutherland, in 1988.
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Keeping It Short and Sweet: Postcard From New York City
The second annual Story Prize ceremony, held at the New School’s Tishman Auditorium in late January, began like most literary events in New York City—with much chattering among publishing folk, rising in volume until the lights went down and a hush descended on the room. The evening’s format was simple. The three finalists, fiction writers Jim Harrison, Maureen F. McHugh, and Patrick O’Keefe, would each read from their books and then sit for a short discussion with Larry Dark. In 2004 Dark, the former O. Henry Prize Stories series editor, launched the prize with Julie Lindsey in an effort to promote a genre they believed was underrepresented by other literary awards. The winner of the first annual prize was Edwidge Danticat for The Dew Breaker (Knopf, 2004).
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In Search of David Foster Wallace
Whether it’s a thousand-page novel, a single-paragraph story, or a footnoted essay, the elusive author always offers a complicated—and sometimes maddening—reading experience. But is there more to David Foster Wallace than words on a page?
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Q&A: Ulin Takes Critical Control in L.A.
At the end of his fourth week on the job as the book editor of the Los Angeles Times, Ulin spoke about his intentions for the Book Review and his responsibilities as its new editor.
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Poets Move From Page to Stage
In the second half of the twentieth century, a number of poets’ theater programs, including the Poets’ Theatre, which was established in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1950, and staged plays by John Ashbery, James Merrill, Frank O’Hara, and Richard Wilbur, provided venues for work written by poets for the stage. Now, a new generation of poets’ theater programs are raising their curtains for plays by poets.
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The Politics of Fiction
Can political fiction matter? Stephen Elliott, the editor of Politically Inspired, an anthology published by MacAdam/Cage in 2003, and its follow-up, Stumbling and Raging: More Politically Inspired Fiction, published by MacAdam/Cage this month, casts his vote in the “definitely yes” column.
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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 Paris Review, A Public Space, lyric, Saranac Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Red River Review, the Canary, and River Styx.
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The Contester: More Contest News
The University of Georgia Press recently revoked the 2004 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction given to Brad Vice of Starkville, Mississippi, for his short story collection, The Bear Bryant Funeral Train, which was published in September 2005, after learning that one of the stories contained uncredited material from Carl Carmer’s Stars Fell on Alabama, a book of nonfiction published by Farrar & Rinehart in 1934 and later reprinted by the University of Alabama Press.
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Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin
This installment of Page One features excerpts from Parallel Play by Stephen Burt and The Thin Place by Kathryn Davis.
A Cinematic Approach to Publishing
For those who don’t mind Hollywood versions of great literature, a new series of novels packaged with the DVD recordings of the films they inspired allows for a side-by-side comparison.
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Small Press Points
Small Press Points highlights the happenings of the small press players. This issue features Action Books, Fence Books, Verse Press, Wave Books, Tin House Books, Bloomsbury USA, Twisted Spoon Press, and White Pine Press.
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The Secret Facts of Fiction: A Profile of Sigrid Nunez
In five books written within the past eleven years, incuding The Last of Her Kind, Sigrid Nunez has obscured and sometimes just ignored traditional distinctions of genre by blending elements of fiction and autobiography.
The Contester: Press Offers Refund, and Then Some
Joining the ranks of literary contests that have failed to yield a winner, Winnow Press is the latest sponsor to announce that the manuscripts received for their First Book Award were not up to par; they are, however, offering something of a consolation prize.
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The Contester: Series Editor Retires Amid Controversy
Fueled by allegations of unfairness, Bin Ramke announces his retirement after twenty-two years as editor of the Contemporary Poetry Series.
Amazon Starts Publishing Program
In August, Amazon.com launched a program that offers customers short stories and essays in a digital format for forty-nine cents each.