The Time Is Now: Writing Prompts and Exercises
Experiment with myth, reinvent your relationships, and give love a bad name—three prompts to ignite the creative process.
Department: The Literary Life
Selected Poems: Looking Back on a Lifetime of Writing
A former United States poet laureate reflects on his career, and how his experiences of love, partnership, and aging helped shape the curatorial process for his newest collection.
Mermaids and Matryoshkas: The Secret Life of a Poetic Sequence
A poet and author talks with five published and noteworthy poets about craft and creative process, and what they do when the going gets tough.
The Time Is Now
Invent new words, change your perceptions, or get mistaken for strangers--three exercises to flex your creative muscles.
Story Collection as Form: Building a Book of Short Fiction
How does a story collection happen? Justin Taylor, the author of two short story collections, offers advice about the various ways in which to build a book of short fiction.
Getting the Led Out: Discovering a Better Essay in the Foothills of South Carolina
The process of writing is one of discovery. A creative nonfiction writer describes how an essay in her new collection came to life, with a little unexpected help from Led Zeppelin.
Know Thyself: The Linguistics of Place
Contributing editor Jeremiah Chamberlin discusses the value in understanding and appreciating the linguistics of place—in this case, the Midwest—in works of fiction, using the stories of Jack Driscoll and Bonnie Jo Campbell as examples.
Why We Write: Failure Is an Option
In the life of a writer, sometimes failure is an option, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Fiction writer and contributing editor Michael Bourne shares what he has learned from writing—and failing to sell—two novels.
The Time Is Now
Compose a poem from a stranger’s perspective, unlock your unconscious with “automatic writing,” or create your own astrological forecast—three prompts to help you reach new depths in your writing.
Preparing for the Worst: The Negatively Framed Outline
Pessimism can be a writer’s best friend: Fiction writer Benjamin Percy explores how the worst-case scenario can bring out the best in a story.
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