Jump to navigation Skip to content
The holiday season often means traveling short or long distances to spend time with family and friends. You might find yourself in a car, bus, train, subway, plane, or perhaps even a combination of several modes of transportation. Write a personal essay about an experience you’ve had while in transit during the holidays. Were there particular memories that surfaced as you looked out a bus window at the passing scenery? Did an unexpectedly funny or fascinating conversation take place with others who happened to be riding with you?
Essay contest determines new owner of movie theater; next year’s Shakespeare extravaganza; the role of absurdity in literature; and other news.
With an introduction by John Updike, The Writer's Desk showcases Jill Krementz's black-and-white portraits of over fifty well-known writers from the latter half of the twentieth century, such as Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Pablo Neruda, Susan Sontag, and Kurt Vonnegut, at work on their craft. Emerging and established writers alike will be inspired and fascinated by the photos of the authors, which are accompanied by their own descriptions on individual creative routines and spaces.
In Antarctica’s winter season, which takes place from late February through September, temperatures can reach one hundred degrees below zero Fahrenheit. There are about four months of complete darkness and the population typically shrinks to approximately one-fifth of its summer population size. Write a short story with the backdrop of an Antarctic winter. What unexpected circumstances might arise by being stuck indoors without sunlight with the same group of people for months in cramped quarters? What thoughts, occurrences, and behavior might be unique to the experience of living in such an extreme environment?
Colm Tóibín on Clarice Lispector; Charles D’Ambrosio on the essay form; booksellers’ top picks of the year; and other news.
Diane Williams reads seven stories from her collection Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty (McSweeney's Books, 2012) for the Franklin Park Reading Series in Brooklyn. Williams's newest collection of stories, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine (McSweeney's Books, 2016), is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
This week, write a pantoum, a modern verse form adapted from traditional Malaysian folk poetry that uses repeated lines throughout a series of quatrains. How does the repetition of words influence the mood or pacing of your poem? Allow the repeated phrases to take on different meanings as the contexts shift throughout the piece. Refer to the Academy of American Poets website for details and examples of pantoums.
