Writing Badly: The True Source of Inspiration
A poet explains how allowing ourselves to write badly is not only generative, but can also break the habit of self-censorship and can lead to our best work.
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Genre: Cross-Genre
Queer Futures
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“Do we always go and attend funerals and then after the funerals you go home and wait for another funeral, what? You have to document. You are forced to document.” In this video from the 2015 PEN World Voices Festival, Shireen Hassim moderates a conversation with Kehinde Bademosi, Zanele Muholi, and Binyavanga Wainaina to survey today's African gay rights landscape.
Once by Meghan O’Rourke
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“A girl ate ices / in the red summer.” In this Motionpoems film, the title poem from Meghan O’Rourke’s second collection, Once (Norton, 2011), is interpreted by filmmakers Angela & Ithyle.
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Complex Stories for Unheard Voices
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"I want women and girls of African descent and of color to be able to not have to keep searching for stories about themselves." For PBS NewsHour's "Brief but Spectacular" series, playwright and actress Danai Gurira encourages writers to tell their stories, their heritage, directly from the source.
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Such Great Heights: A Profile of Annie Dillard
Annie Dillard has applied an endless curiosity and formidable intellect to elevate a searching and searing style of prose that has served as an example for generations of writers. A new collection, The Abundance, celebrates her masterful essays.
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Poets & Writers Live: San Francisco Highlights
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The second year of Poets & Writers Live debuted with an event at the Brava Theater in San Francisco on January 10, 2015, featuring a "poetry keynote" by Pulitzer Prize–winner and former U.S. poet laureate Kay Ryan; conversations about inspiration and the writing life with dozens of authors, including Michelle Tea, David Shields, Wendy Lesser, and D. A. Powell; advice from agent Danielle Svetcov and other publishing professionals; a multigenre, multimedia “inspiration experiment” featuring dancer Sarah Fiske and musician Ben Arthur; and much more.
Inspiration Experiment: San Francisco
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Acclaimed author Joyce Carol Oates, singer-songwriter Ben Arthur, poet and filmmaker Nick Twemlow, award-winning illustrator Roman Muradov, and dancer Sarah Fiske will present an inspired series of linked performances, followed by a conversation, led by Kevin Larimer, about the creative process and the roots of inspiration.
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Orlando
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Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando: A Biography (Mariner Books, 1973), adapted by Darryl Pinckney, was transformed into a music theater performance by director Cathie Boyd's Scottish production company Cryptic. Pinckney is the author of Black Deutschland (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016), a new novel exploring sexuality and identity.
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The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
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Narrated by English actor Julian Sands, this animated film, part of the anthology Extraordinary Tales, is based on a lesser-known short story by Edgar Allan Poe, a detective tale about a man mesmerized in articulo mortis. Extraordinary Tales is composed of five stories by Poe, featuring the voices of Christopher Lee, Bela Lugosi, Roger Corman, and Guillermo del Toro, and is directed by Raul Garcia.
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Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven
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In this interpretation of Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven," the film is set in December 1959 where a young writer has locked himself in a hotel room and an 8mm projector screens images of his lost love Lenore. Directed by Don Thiel and Chris Saphire, the film won Best Short at the 2011 H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival, judged by Guillermo del Toro.
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