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“Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude,” said Martin Luther King Jr. Imagine a character who needs to forgive someone. Who does he or she need to forgive? What was the nature of the injury? What were its implications? Does forgiveness come easily to your character, or is retaliation a more natural impulse? Does your character try and fail to forgive initially? See how your character’s desire to forgive creates obstacles and ultimately fuels your plot.
“I feel very transparent to myself. I’m more like an observer. I’m interested in what’s going on.” Joyce Carol Oates, whose most recent novel, Carthage, is published this month by Ecco, discusses her writing process, interests, and why she’s not sure she has a personality.
"I imagined that because everyone was telling me I was so very bright, there must be something there for me. But my skin was black," says Guyanese author, teacher, and diplomat E. R. Braithwaite, whose five nonfiction books and two novels, including To Sir, With Love (1959), are available as e-books from Open Road Integrated Media.
“Magical thinking makes you crazy and renders everything possible.” In this video, author Zadie Smith discusses her writing, literary influences, and the spiritual aspects of the creative process.
Effective listening is imperative to effective writing. Listening carefully while sitting on a crowded subway, drinking coffee in a lonely diner, or asking a stranger for directions can lead to new characters, settings, and story lines. It is also important to listen to your own characters. Make a list of ten questions to ask a character you are developing. Listen to your character’s answers, diction, and inflection, and write down what you hear and see in your imagination. Most people, including fictional characters, will tell you who they are. You just have to ask.
Watch this trailer for the film adaptation of Joyce Maynard’s novel Labor Day. The movie, which stars Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin, relates the story of a single mother and her lonely son who take in a mysterious stranger with a complicated past.
The finalists were announced today for the tenth-annual Story Prize, an award given for a short story collection published in the previous year. The winner will receive $20,000.
The finalists are Archangel by Andrea Barrett (W. W. Norton), Bobcat by Rebecca Lee (Algonquin Books), and Tenth of December by George Saunders (Random House). The collections were chosen by Story Prize founder Julie Lindsey and director Larry Dark from among ninety-six submitted books, published by sixty-four different presses in 2013. The finalists will each receive $5,000.
Lindsey and Dark also announced the winner of the second annual Story Prize Spotlight Award, a $1,000 prize given for a “short story collection worthy of additional attention.” The 2014 winner is Byzantium (Graywolf Press) by Ben Stroud.
This year's final judges—author Antonya Nelson; Tin House editor Rob Spillman; and Stephen Ennis, director of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin—will select the 2014 Story Prize winner, who will be announced at the annual awards ceremony and reading on March 5 in New York City.
More about this year’s finalists and Spotlight Award winner can be found on the Story Prize website and official blog. Claire Vaye Watkins won the 2013 award for her debut collection, Battleborn.
Below, listen to finalist Rebecca Lee read an excerpt from her collection, Bobcat, as part of the Poets & Writers Author Podcast series.
“It gives people the opportunity to have something to hold on to that is not available in digital form.” Helen Yentus, the art director of Riverhead Books, discusses the experience of designing a 3D printed slipcase for a limited edition of Chang-rae Lee's novel On Such a Full Sea.
Sponsored by Dzanc Books, the annual DISQUIET Literary Prize in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction is currently open for submissions. A winner in each category will receive publication in a participating literary journal, and one grand-prize winner will receive airfare, accommodations, and tuition—a prize worth approximately $5,000—to attend the fourth annual DISQUIET International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal, this summer.
The winner in poetry will be published in the Collagist; the winner in fiction will be published in Guernica; and the winner in nonfiction will be published in Ninth Letter. Finalists in each category will be offered partial tuition scholarships to attend the DISQUIET program. Four full scholarships to attend the retreat are also available for writers of Luso descent.
Submit up to ten poems or up to twenty pages of prose with a $15 entry fee by February 15. Entries may be submitted online via Submittable or sent by mail to Dzanc Books, the DISQUIET Prize, 610 South Pleasant Street, Amherst, MA 01002. Previously unpublished works in English are eligible. Writers must live or have lived in the United States or Canada, but need not be citizens or permanent residents.
Founded by Dzanc in 2011 and inspired by Lisbon poet Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet, the annual DISQUIET International Literary Program is a two-week retreat that brings together North American and Portuguese writers in the heart of Lisbon. The program offers workshops in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and writing the Luso experience; craft seminars; discussions with editors from Dzanc Books, Guernica, Ninth Letter, New York Review of Books, St. Petersburg Review, and other publishers and magazines; a series of lectures on Portuguese literature and culture; talks and readings with Portuguese writers; literary walks; film screenings; and social events and excursions in and around Lisbon.
The 2014 program will be held from June 29 through July 11. Workshop faculty includes poets Erica Dawson and David Lehman; fiction writers Denis Johnson, Alissa Nutting, and Padgett Powell; and nonfiction writer Josip Novakovich, among others. Visit the website for more information and general application guidelines.
“In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.” This quote from French author André Maurois underscores the importance of knowing who you are as a fiction writer. As in love, readers can’t genuinely fall for an author’s work unless the writing is sincere, open, and truthful. Clear your head. Forget about your significant other, your editor, and your audience. Place your protagonist and antagonist in a location familiar to you, and write six hundred words about their interaction. The characters are people unto themselves, but your mind creates the attitude, style, and tone of the world in which they live. In fiction, the writer is nowhere, and everywhere, at all times. This is the authorial being that readers come to love.
