Poets & Writers Magazine welcomes feedback from its readers. Please post a comment on select articles at pw.org, e-mail editor@pw.org, or write to Editor, Poets & Writers Magazine, 90 Broad Street, Suite 2100, New York, NY 10004. Letters accepted for publication may be edited for clarity and length.
Letters
Feedback from readers
The defunding of the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, as reported by Adrienne Raphel (“The Gutting of the IWP,” July/August 2025), hit close to home for me. A “triumph of borders” indeed. Of “manmade divisions,” as I put it in my transnational novel, Go Home, which repurposes the xenophobic insult as a quest for home. In these times [marked by] mass deportations and a president who told [four] U.S. congresswomen of color, including those born here, to “go back” to the “crime-infested countries from which they came,” the IWP is clearly “a bridge, a sanctuary, a meeting place for the world’s stories.” The [IWP] is a historic and invaluable literary gem that lives up to the University of Iowa Press’s motto: “Iowa: Where great writing begins.”
Sohrab Homi Fracis
Jacksonville, Florida
Thank you to Melissa Ford Gradel and Madeline McIntosh for their essay “Two Plus Two Equals Four” (From Poets & Writers, Inc., May/June 2025). I was reassured to read that Poets & Writers will continue to stand by our freedom of speech, even at the risk of losing NEA grants. Uncompromising truth-telling is precisely what these times demand. We writers must be vigilant and insistent that our voices are not silenced as we persist in our work.
Cecilia Erin Walsh
Seattle, Washington
Thank you to Poets & Writers Magazine for still being in print. I am currently incarcerated, and this is where I found my love of poetry. I am a poet trying to perfect and put together my first collection. Something I’ve been considering is [submitting] some of my pieces to a number of the contests this magazine promotes. More so after the encouraging words of the “Ready, Set, Submit!” special section in the May/June 2025 issue. But even after reading the [guidelines] and…getting the funds available to pay the entry fees, I have a problem—and it is not a lack of confidence in my work. I can win. It is Submittable. In my unique situation we don’t have open access to any link we want, [including] Submittable, and a majority of contests want you to use online submissions only, and that is where I lose before I can even enter. If I could submit via a physical address I would enter, and you probably wouldn’t be hearing my name from this letter but rather as a winner of one or more of the contests you promote. Sad to say I am confined within these walls, but that does not mean the world should not hear my voice or at least read my verse.
Shawn North
El Dorado Correctional Facility
El Dorado, Kansas
[Corrections]
In “The Next Great Agents: Six Rising Stars on Advocacy, Artistry, and What’s Ahead” (July/August 2025) by Emma Komlos-Hrobsky, it was inaccurately stated that Aram Fox of Massie McQuilken & Altman led his clients to option works by Brit Bennett, Anthony Doerr, and George Saunders. In fact, Fox scouted these writers for publisher clients. Due to incorrect information provided by the sponsoring organization, in Deadlines (May/June 2025), the prize amount for Blessing the Boats Selections, sponsored by BOA Editions, was incorrectly listed as $2,500. The cash prize is $1,500. Additionally, the listed deadline of July 14 was subsequently extended to August 1.