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“A lot of this book was me figuring out, how do you hold on to hope when it feels like the world is falling apart?” In this Late Night With Seth Meyers interview, Celeste Ng talks about the process of writing her latest novel, Our Missing Hearts (Penguin Press, 2022). A profile of Ng by Renée H. Shea is featured in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
The author of In the Current Where Drowing Is Beautiful highlights five journals that first published her poems, including Peripheries and the Capilano Review.
The Oxford Dictionary of African American English, slated for release in 2025, will involve a three-year-long multidisciplinary research project compiling terms popularized by speakers of African American English.
A curated list of twenty-two literary magazines that pay writers cash for their creative contributions.
“This year Amadeo Padilla is Jesus. The hermanos have been preparing in the dirt yard behind the morada,” reads Kirstin Valdez Quade from her award-winning debut novel, The Five Wounds (Norton, 2021), in this 2021 virtual reading for the James Merrill House’s Writer-in-Residence reading series.
“Black of pure tint, I cry and laugh / the vibration of being a black statue; / a chunk of night, in which my white / teeth are lightning.” In this video for the Favorite Poem Project, bilingual special education teacher Glaisma Pérez-Silva reads Julia de Burgos’s poem “Ay, Ay, Ay, de la Grifa Negra,” translated from the Spanish by Jack Agüeros.
“These New York City Pigeons / cooing in the air shaft / are responsible for me.” Timothy Liu reads Jayne Cortez’s poem “These New York City Pigeons” and two poems from his latest book, Let It Ride (Saturnalia Books, 2019), for the Poets House Hard Hat Reading series.
“Everything happens fast. Handcuffs on Chino. Uniforms do the same to the others who didn’t run fast enough.” In this video, Javier Zamora speaks with Today Show’s Jenna Bush about his three-thousand-mile journey alone as a nine-year-old from El Salvador to the United States which he recounts in his memoir, Solito (Hogarth, 2022).
What can we learn from a single conversation? In Richard Bausch’s short story “Aren’t You Happy for Me?” the protagonist Ballinger speaks to his daughter Melanie over the phone. The conversation, which increases in stakes and tension as it progresses, centers around both parties needing to share life-altering news: Melanie is pregnant and planning to marry an older man while Ballinger and his wife are planning to separate. The story is told with very little narration and is almost entirely written in dialogue. This week try writing a story that takes place over the course of a phone call. Consider what is said and unsaid in the dialogue and how this creates tension between your characters.
In Derrick Austin’s poem “Jesus Year,” he creates a portrait of his life on the occasion of his thirty-third birthday. Instead of leaning toward the more familiar images of birthday cakes or candles, Austin begins by describing his immediate surroundings: “My clogged sink coughs up foul water. / My skeletal philodendron,” he writes. The poem then offers more about his life; family members, a cerulean sweater worn through a winter without work, memories of the last time he smoked a cigarette. Taking inspiration from Austin, write a poem that paints a portrait of your life. Try to color the poem with unexpected images to offer a complete picture.
