Hi! My name is Bill Waters, and I love to write! Over the years, I've carved out a small but vibrant space for myself mainly in the areas of Japanese-style micropoetry, photo and video poetry, ekphrastic poetry, found verse, and compressed prose. My work has appeared in print and online in numerous established, up-and-coming, and aspiring niche publications, as well as on signs as part of public poetry installations.

Are there any writers out there who like to write collaboratively? It's fun! There are two-person and three-person rengay (Japanese-style micropoetry that employs alternating stanzas); multiperson "exquisite corpse" poems, where writers are given only the last word of the preceding stanza as a prompt; two-person tapestry poems, in which two poems -- one written by each participant -- are shuffled together into one poem, and other possibilities. 

Why write collaboratively? It's interactive; it's friendly; it stirs up the creative juices; and it can lead to some remarkably good (and publishable!) results. I'm game... Are you?  :- )

Hello! My writing experience has been a great one. My knidergarten teacher told my mother that I was a natural storyteller but I didn't realize my passion for writing until the 7th grade. I was the kid in the back of the classroom, afraid to speak because of a stutter so I wrote everything down. I have been attached to pen and paper every since. I would like to improve my poetry, specifically, and I am really looking for honest and open feedback. I would love to be a part of a writing group that is willing to give blunt feedback; not just handed out compliments. Thank you!! Can't wait to meet you :)

I fell hard for language at a very early age, thanks to Lewis Carrol, A.A. Milne, Dr. Seuss, and later, Edgar Allen Poe. My taste has moved on and I'm always inspired by well-crafted verse. I've written and published poems since I was in my teens - not often but enough to keep me polishing my work. (I've also written prose, an a few years ago published a book of reflections on growing older, The Seasoned Soul. And I edited a couple of children's books of verse/blessings.) Mid-career I became an ordained U.U. minister, so I've written a lot of sermons, meditations, etc. but recently returned to my first love. I'm in a small writing group, which I enjoy but focuses chiefly on memoir and fiction. I'm looking for a community of experienced, enthusiastic, careful readers and writers of poetry, to share kind, clear, honest feedback. And ideas. And laughs.

I've been a poet forever, with a chapbook published by Dancing Girl Press and 2 full length manuscripts making the rounds. I have been branching out lately into visual poetry (haven't shown anyone yet!) and into fiction -- thus far I've stuck with short speculative/horror fiction. I'd love to write personal and/or lyric essays but I just never seem to finish them for some reason! 

I'm not sure what I'm looking for in a writing group! I'd like to see what this platform has to offer and then I'll edit :)

I'm interested in being part of a supportive writing group to help me dedicate time to my own writing (poetry, prose poems, flash fiction) and to participate in discussions about group members' writing and the writing craft.

Barbara Westwood Diehl is founding and senior editor of The Baltimore Review. Her fiction and poetry have been accepted for publication in a variety of journals, including Quiddity, Potomac Review (Best of the 50), Measure, Little Patuxent Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, Gargoyle, Superstition Review, NANO Fiction, Per Contra, Thrush Poetry Journal, Atticus Review, The MacGuffin, The Shore, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Ponder Review, and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Poem in the TELEPHONE Project.