Literary MagNet: Jennifer Maritza McCauley
The author of When Trying to Return Home describes her connection with journals that first published her stories, including Jabberwock Review and the Vassar Review.
Tags:
Pushcart Rolls Through Fifty Years
Bill Henderson founded Pushcart Press with one goal: to empower overlooked writers to publish their own work. Fifty years later, Pushcart is still elevating independent publishers and authors with its annual prize anthology.
Tags:
Poets at the Museum
In partnership with the Academy of American Poets, the Guggenheim is refreshing its connection to poetry with a poets-in-residence program, through which the museum is reimagining its offerings to engage the community with verse.
Tags:
Kimiko Hahn on Poetry and Dust
Caption:
“Nowadays, I lie down in the sunlight / To see my mama moting around / As sympathetic ash. / Yes, one morning whether misty or yellow / I’ll be soot with her.” In this installment of PBS NewsHour’s “Brief But Spectacular” series, Kimiko Hahn reads her poem “A Dusting,” which appears in her collection Foreign Bodies (Norton, 2022), and speaks about the power of poetry to connect us with our loved ones.
Genre:
Vermin
Oftentimes it’s the underrated things in life that make the perfect inspiration for a poem. In “For the Poet Who Told Me Rats Aren’t Noble Enough Creatures for a Poem,” Elizabeth Acevedo rises to the title’s challenge by honoring the “inelegant, simple,” and tenacious animal that is often hunted down. In “St. Roach,” Muriel Rukeyser writes to the humble cockroach and captures the moment in which the speaker reaches out and touches one. This week write a poem inspired by an animal that might be considered vermin and reflect on why you might fear or avoid this creature.
Reality vs. Fantasy With Kim Fu and Lidia Yuknavitch
Caption:
In this video, Kim Fu, author of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century (Tin House, 2022), and Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Thrust (Riverhead Books, 2022), speak about writing within off-kilter realities for this 2022 National Book Festival event moderated by Poets & Writers editor-in-chief Kevin Larimer.
Genre:
The 1619 Project
Caption:
“This is where our story as Black Americans begins.” Watch the trailer for The 1619 Project, a six-part Hulu docuseries adaptation of the book of the same name hosted by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author Nikole Hannah-Jones.
Genre:
Gordon Parks on Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man
Caption:
In this video, Naeem Douglas, a content producer for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, talks about the history behind the artistic friendship and collaborations between photographer Gordon Parks and author Ralph Ellison. This series of photographs shot by Parks was inspired by Ellison’s 1952 novel Invisible Man.
Genre:
History of Love
Valentine’s Day is commonly known as a day to express affection for loved ones with greetings and gifts, but its origin remains a bit of a mystery. Some suggest that the holiday dates back to Lupercalia, a Roman festival to ward off evil spirits and infertility that was later banned in the fifth century, while others have said that the true origin of the day is related to a priest named Valentine who was martyred circa 270 CE by emperor Claudius II. According to one legend, the priest signed a letter “from your Valentine” to his jailer’s daughter. Other accounts tell the story of St. Valentine of Terni, a bishop who secretly married couples to spare husbands from war. What is your personal history with Valentine’s Day? Using these origin stories as inspiration, write an essay that explores your memories of this holiday of love.
Elegy by Linda Pastan
Caption:
“Last night the moon lifted itself / on one wing / over the fields.” In this 1992 recording for Howard County Poetry and Literature Society’s The Writing Life, Linda Pastan reads her poem “Elegy,” which appears in her collection Imperfect Paradise (Norton, 1989). Pastan died at the age of ninety on January 30, 2023.
Genre:
Pages
