Necessary Agent
An editor reveals how the best agents—Molly Friedrich, Jud Laghi, Chris Parris-Lamb, Scott Moyers, and Jennifer Joel among them—work behind the scenes to help their clients’ books get the attention they deserve.
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Article Archive
Articles from Poet & Writers Magazine include material from the print edition plus exclusive online-only material.
Q&A: Halpern's Enduring Poetry Series
On the thirtieth anniversary of the launch of the National Poetry Series, Halpern speaks about both its history and its future.
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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 Isotope, Gigantic, Bombay Gin, Ploughshares, the Harvard Review, and Prairie Schooner.
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3 for Free
In this regular feature, we offer a few suggestions for podcasts, smartphone apps, Web tools, newsletters, museum shows, and gallery openings: a medley of literary curiosities that you might enjoy.
Roosevelt's Writers
The Federal Writers' Project was established seventy-five years ago, and according to one author and documentary filmmaker, it was a watershed event, if not a turning point, in the history of American literature. Employing up to 7,500 people annually during its four-year run, the Writers’ Project nurtured a generation of authors who otherwise might have been forced into nonliterary careers.
Digital Digest: The Changing Economics of E-books
Apple’s entry into the e-book market has given publishers the leverage they needed to force a marketwide shift from a wholesale to an “agency” model of e-book retailing, but the long-term impact of the move—for both publishers and authors—remains unclear.
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Small Press Points
Small Press Points highlights the happenings of the small press players. This issue features Blue Hour Press, an independent poetry publisher in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, that is “dedicated to bridging the gap between the beauty and tradition of print and the accessibility and possibility of the Web, releasing digital chapbooks that are satisfying, respectable, and innovative.”
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The Written Image: Race Car Poetry
Race car driver Alex Grabau has customized his car with a decal of a poem by Jim Daniels. From July 9 to 11, Grabau will compete in Giants Despair, an uphill race in Laurel Run, Pennsylvania. He will race again at the Duryea Hillclimb in Reading, Pennsylvania, from August 20 to 22.
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Poets Take Action in Wake of Gulf Coast Disaster
On Tuesday the second annual United Nations World Oceans Day was observed, a date that also marked the seventh week of the ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Judge and Genre: A Profile of Scott Turow
There’s more to novelist Scott Turow than a knack for compelling plotlines and a sales history that stands at more than thirty million books—and we’re not just talking about his day job as an attorney.
Agent Advice: PJ Mark of Janklow & Nesbit Associates
The agent of authors such as Samantha Hunt, Dinaw Mengestu, and Josh Weil offers advice on shaping a query letter and when to follow up after pitching your book.
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First: Karl Marlantes’s Matterhorn
Today, Karl Marlantes's debut novel is garnering praise for its vivid, trenchant portrayal of American soldiers in the thick of the Vietnam War. But for more than thirty years, the manuscript languished in literary purgatory, while the author struggled to find an agent—not to mention a publisher—willing to take it on.
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Open-Air Publishing
Broadsided, a monthly literature-and-art project that brings poetry and prose into people's everyday lives by posting it in public spaces, reaches beyond local schools, streets, and shops to take open-air publishing global.
Northwestern Acquires Curbstone
Curbstone Press, the independent, nonprofit publisher that for more than three decades published international literature in Willimantic, Connecticut, and Northwestern University Press in Chicago agreed late last year to form a partnership.
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3 for Free
In this feature, we offer a few suggestions for podcasts, smartphone apps, Web tools, newsletters, museum shows, and gallery openings: a medley of literary curiosities that you might enjoy. And if you don't? Quit complaining, they're free.
Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin
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 Dorothea Lasky's Black Life and Travis Nichols's Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder, as the starting point for a closer look at these new and noteworthy titles.
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The Written Image: Playing With Books
A look at a sculpture by U.K. artist Su Blackwell, one of the thirty-three artists showcased in the art book and craft guide Playing With Books: The Art of Upcycling, Deconstructing, and Reimagining the Book, published by Quarry Books in April.
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Digital Digest: Vooks Look Like a Brand-New Read
Since last fall, an Alameda, California–based start-up has been blending digital text, images, video, and social networking to produce what it calls "vooks" (a portmanteau word formed from video and book), which can be accessed through any Web browser or downloaded to mobile devices via Apple's iTunes Store.
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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 Little Star, Still Crazy, the Paris Review, the Southwest Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, DIAGRAM, and Linebreak.
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Small Press Points
Small Press Points highlights the happenings of the small press players. This issue features CityLit Press, an independent publisher based in Baltimore that provides a venue for writers who might otherwise be ignored by larger independent or commercial publishers.
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Poetry Society Celebrates Centennial
The Poetry Society of America, the oldest poetry organization in the country, is marking its centennial this year with a number of special events that are being held across the country.
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Inside Indie Bookstores: Women & Children First in Chicago
In the third installment of our series Inside Indie Bookstores, contributor Jeremiah Chamberlin travels to Chicago to talk with Linda Bubon and Ann Christophersen, co-owners of Women & Children First.
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No Ordinary Woman: An Interview With Lucille Clifton
An interview with Lucille Clifton for a special April 1999 issue of the magazine, the cover of which featured the poet.