Genre: Creative Nonfiction

Letter to an Old Friend

10.22.15

Write a letter to a friend you’ve lost touch with for at least ten years—perhaps you haven’t spoken to each other because of a falling-out or one of you moved to a new town. What do you remember about the last time you saw this person? Reflect upon the ways in which you have changed and remained the same from who you were ten years ago. Examine the emotions that surface when you think about this old friend and your relationship, and the physical places that your memories take you.

Marilynne Robinson on Faith and Democracy

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"If you think the human mind is a wonderful thing, there is an infinite interest in cultivating it." Marilynne Robinson speaks with Bill Moyers about her novel Lila (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014), and her thoughts on faith, democracy, and creativity. Robinson discusses her new book of essays, The Givenness of Things (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Marilynne Robinson

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"The mind is a much more generous resource than we're in the habit of considering it to be." The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist speaks about accessing imagination through writing and her teaching experiences at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Robinson discusses her new book of essays, The Givenness of Things (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Lost Cat

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"It's hard to protect a person you love from pain, because people often choose pain. I am a person who often chooses pain. An animal will never choose pain." Mary Gaitskill, whose new novel, The Mare (Pantheon Books, 2015), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, reads from her personal essay "Lost Cat" (Granta, 2009) at Baruch College.

Write Around Portland

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"Write Around Portland just ignited that fire in me: to write, to get back to writing, and to really find my voice." Reuben Alvarez-Paris speaks about his experiences with the nonprofit organization dedicated to community and writing. Jenny Chu, program coordinator at Write Around Portland, will lead a panel at Poets & Writers Live on October 17 in Portland, Oregon.

Carrie Brownstein

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"As readers we can't simply witness or observe a book from afar—we have to live inside it, we have to go through it, and every time we do, we expand a version of our own lives." Carrie Brownstein talks about the relationship between readers, books, and writers in her introduction to the 2013 National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 ceremony. Brownstein's debut memoir, Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl (Riverhead Books, 2015), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Fragile

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"At the ocean's edge, which feels like a kind of conclusion to the clumsy whisper of names we read onto the land—we are left with no words for the choppy shove of the waves..." Jeffrey Thomson's debut memoir, Fragile (Red Mountain Press, 2015), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Written in the Stars

10.8.15

Whether or not you believe in astrology, it can be an engaging exercise to contemplate the authority of a prediction based solely on your birthdate. Look up your current horoscope in a newspaper or online, and take note of how the forecast characterizes your astrological sign. Which particular elements of the horoscope’s characterizations do you find yourself immediately agreeing with? If you find yourself mostly in disagreement, what would you predict for yourself instead? Using the second-person voice, write an essay in the form of an astrological forecast. Describe how you foresee the upcoming month in terms of love, finances, home, and spiritual matters, and cite how these predictions are justified by your personality traits. Or, if you’d prefer, write an essay against astrology, pointing out the flaws in such pseudoscientific systems of divination, and examining what it is about your personality that opposes them.

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