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Articles from Poet & Writers Magazine include material from the print edition plus exclusive online-only material.
Brian Turner is best known for his award-winning poetry collections and memoir about the Iraq War, but with his new project he has pushed into an entirely new dimension of creative expression.
How does a writer tell a story set in another country during a time before she was even born? Research, research, research.
“You can almost always make something better by making it shorter.” —Keith Gessen, author of the novel A Terrible Country
The desire to tell stories is one thing; finding the stories you want to tell is something else entirely.
“Get in where you fit in, and where you don’t, break it.” —Jasmine Gibson, author of Don’t Let Them See Me Like This
A simple exercise to help lead you closer to the fiery core of your own, utterly unique, narrative style.
“Avoid the word ‘it’ whenever possible. Which is to say, specificity whenever possible.” —Lillian Li, author of the debut novel Number One Chinese Restaurant
Simon Van Booy writes about opening your whole life to creativity.
“That was the scariest part in making this come together: the endless possible permutations of inclusion, exclusion, order; the fear of endless possibility.” —Grady Chambers, author of the poetry collection North American Stadiums
This year’s debut fiction roundup features emerging writers R. O. Kwon, Fatima Farheen Mirza, Jamel Brinkley, Katharine Dion, and Tommy Orange.
In a continuing series on international writing communities, contributing editor Stephen Morison Jr. spends time with authors and publishers in Bogotá, Colombia.
Florida isn’t just the title of Lauren Groff’s new story collection, published in June by Riverhead Books; it’s also a bad joke, a good home, a source of inspiration, a set of contradictions, and, perhaps, ultimately a state of mind.
The teams behind debut authors Jordy Rosenberg, Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Aja Gabel, Rachel Z. Arndt, and Ruth Joffre.
Poets and educators work to fight campus carry bills.
The first lines of a dozen new books, including Sick by Porochista Khakpour and Sons of Achilles by Nabila Lovelace.
Agent Gillian MacKenzie on her new partnership with lawyer Kirsten Wolf.
A fiction press for first-time authors.
The influence of Instagram on the way we read poetry.
Simon Van Booy considers writing as a process of instinct rather than thought.
An essayist discusses five journals that published work from her debut collection, Tonight I’m Someone Else.
Creating local reading spaces for young black boys.
Ex-library books are catalogued in a new home.
An entrepreneur self-publishes a book about the failure of his business. An editor and publicist weigh in.
In his sixth book, a sonnet sequence published by Penguin in June, Terrance Hayes cuts deep, to the marrow of the American moment, in a form with a razor’s edge: love poems for the forces trying to kill you.
“I’m still amazed by the decisions that get made that can make or break a book before it even hits the shelves.” —Lee Martin, author of the story collection The Mutual UFO Network, published today by Dzanc Books
