Article Archive

Articles from Poet & Writers Magazine include material from the print edition plus exclusive online-only material.

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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.

Writers Mine Crowdfunding Sites

by
Alex Dimitrov
9.1.10

Despite the financial challenges of their vocation, writers have long found accessible, inventive ways to get work into the world. Among the benefit readings and bake sales, a new fund-raising option allows writers to tap into the fertile social networking landscape to find individuals who may be willing to donate the cost of a cupcake to give a project a boost.

Poets Act on Oil Spill

by
Shell Fischer
9.1.10

In response to the Deep-water Horizon oil spill, writers Heidi Lynn Staples and Amy King created Poets for Living Waters, an online poetry forum featuring works written in response to the disaster, spurring a host of nationwide events that give poets not only an opportunity to take action against the catastrophe but also to speak out in support of our natural environment.

2011 Poets & Writers Magazine Ranking of MFA Programs: A Guide to the Methodology

by
Seth Abramson
9.1.10

Size, funding, cost of living—there's plenty to consider when choosing a postgraduate creative writing program. In our second annual ranking of the top fifty MFA programs, contributor Seth Abramson measures sixteen distinct program features for the 148 full-residency programs in the United States, Canada, and New Zealand, and eight features for each of the 46 low-residency programs around the world.

New Book Club Gets a Jump on Critics

by
Kevin Canfield
8.3.10

The Rumpus Book Club, launched in May by Stephen Elliott, offers a compelling twist on the traditional model of online book clubs. Members pay for two things: advance copies of new books, which they’ll receive a month before the official publication date, and access to the people who’ve written them.

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The What and the How of It

by
John Biguenet
7.1.10

An excerpt from “The What and the How of It” by John Biguenet (in Before During After, edited by Elizabeth Kleinveld, to be published by the University of New Orleans Press in 2010).

Writers, Interrupted

by
Katheryn Krotzer Laborde
7.1.10

One writer's monthlong journey with her family from her home on the Gulf Coast to three different cities as she searches for a respite from the storm, meeting others along the way whose loss puts hers in perspective.

Roosevelt's Writers

by
Kevin Nance
7.1.10

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.

American Wins Rolex Mentorship

by
Alex Dimitrov
7.1.10

The Rolex Mentor and 
Protégé Arts Initiative recently announced that this year’s mentor in literature, German writer Hans Magnus Enzensberger, has chosen as his protégée American poet Tracy K. Smith. This is the fifth year a mentorship has been awarded to a writer, and the first time the winning writer has hailed from the United States.

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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 Aimee Bender's The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake and Joshua Mohr's Termite Parade, as the starting point for a closer look at these new and noteworthy titles.

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Literary New Orleans, Post-Katrina

by
Nicole Cooley
7.1.10

On the 
fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, several local and national arts organizations, including the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society and the Poetry Society of America, are presenting readings in New Orleans to commemorate all that was lost—the lives, homes, businesses, and communities—and to celebrate a flourishing of the literary arts in the area since the storm.

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