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Articles from Poet & Writers Magazine include material from the print edition plus exclusive online-only material.
With so many good books being published every month, some literary titles worth exploring can get lost in the stacks. Page One offers the first lines of a dozen recently released books, including Cathy Park Hong’s Engine Empire and Rajesh Parameswaran’s I Am an Executioner: Love Stories, as the starting point for a closer look at these new and noteworthy titles.
The website Small Demons and the X-Ray feature of Amazon’s e-readers are the first in a new crop of digital literary tools that promise to change how readers interact with texts. By equipping users with digital reference frameworks, these new meta-analytical approaches give readers immediate access to the contextual worlds of literary works.
A look at the risks and rewards of book-publication contests, including an overview of the contest model, a breakdown of the budgets behind three major book prizes, the intangible benefits of winning, and an interview with four frequent judges.
Organizers of writing contests are, perhaps not suprisingly, wary of publicizing details of their budgets, but the organizers of three contest programs offered to share the numbers behind their 2011 contests as part of contributing editor Michael Bourne's “The Economics of Competition,” which serves as the centerpiece of the current issue’s special section on the risks and rewards of writing contests.
The agent of Jami Attenberg, David Mitchell, Carolyn Parkhurst, Matthew Quick, and others offers guidance about publishing credits, MFA programs, and unagented submissions.
Administrators offer insight into the mystifying process of applying to a writing retreat by answering some common questions: How do residency juries weigh a work plan? Would your boss make a better reference than a former writing teacher? Is published or unpublished work more desirable in a writing sample?
In her memoir, Wild, published in March 2012, author Cheryl Strayed reveals all she lost following the death of her mother, and takes readers along on her three-month hike through the wilderness to find it again.
In this issue we offer a look at the first four issues of the limited-edition magazine Lovely Daze on display February 20 through March 14 in Millennium Magazine, an exhibition of artist-magazines at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Small Press Points highlights the innovative and can-do spirit of independent presses. This issue features the new Sacramento-based Nouvella, publisher of “collectible, one-of-a-kind mementos that will become dearer and dearer as the authors career progresses.”
Thanks to the accessibility of new digital tools offered by booksellers such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble, self-publishing is loosing its stigma and holds new promise for writers venturing out on their own.
Sherman Alexie, winner of the other NBA, along with other poets and writers, shows off his jump shot in HooPalousa, a basketball tournament-cum-fund-raiser that aims to help create an endowment at the University of Idaho for a Native American MFA candidate.
The late poet laureate Philip Levine spoke in early 2012 about his plans for the position and the range of influences on his work through the years.
With so many good books being published every month, some literary titles worth exploring can get lost in the stacks. Page One offers the first lines of a dozen recently released books, including Esi Edugyan’s Half-Blood Blues and Adam Levin’s Hot Pink, as the starting point for a closer look at these new and noteworthy titles.
In the midst of the political protests that were escalating in Wisconsin last winter, three library science majors at the University of Wisconsin devised the Library as Incubator Project, a website for writers, artists, and librarians to share their creations and ideas in one collaborative space.
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. This issue’s MagNet features Digital Americana, Lumberyard, Sawmill, draft: a journal of process, and Poetry.
Immerse yourself in the music, films, art, and other points of inspiration that set off the spark for our twelve debut poets of 2011.
In this issue we offer a look at one of Kenneth Patchen’s “picture-poems,” currently on display in An Astonished Eye: The Art of Kenneth Patchen, the largest-ever exhibition of the genre-defying writer’s visual work, at the University of Rochester in New York.
In this regular feature, we offer a few suggestions for podcasts, apps, web tools, newsletters, museum shows, and gallery openings: a medley of literary curiosities for readers and writers on a budget.
With so many good books being published every month, some literary titles worth exploring can get lost in the stacks. Page One offers the first lines of a dozen recently released books, including Ben Marcus’s The Flame Alphabet and Amy Newman’s Dear Editor, as the starting point for a closer look at these new and noteworthy titles.
Small Press Points highlights the innovative and can-do spirit of independent presses. This issue features Dorothy, a publishing project, which aims to publish books “of slightly different aesthetic sensibilities but equal wonderfulness” written by women.
For nearly a century, the ampersand has been a key feature of certain strands of American poetry. To understand its history in the genre—and the role it plays for contemporary poets—one must return to the character’s origins.
Geoffrey Bartholomew, poet and head bartender at McSorley’s Old Ale House, New York City’s famous saloon, reveals how he sold five thousand copies of his self-published poetry collection while pushing pints from behind the bar.
The Grub Street literary center has created a long-form fiction class that might offer a cure for the novel-writing anxiety that the traditionally story-centric MFA workshop isn’t equipped to resolve.
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. This issue’s MagNet features New World Writing, Transition, Asymptote, the White Review, Granta, the Dark Horse, and Versal.
The newly launched Findings, an online community that lets users compile and contribute excerpts from books and websites, joins a growing number of digital endeavors that place a new emphasis on sharing while reading.
