Jump to navigation Skip to content
The Daily Beast offers a life-affirming reading list; Kitchen Sink Press has donated its archives to Columbia University; test your literary knowledge with a quiz gleaned from Jeopardy champion Tom Nissley’s A Reader’s Book of Days; and other news.
“I just keep going.” In this clip, taken from a 2010 interview with Bill Moyers, author Louise Erdrich discusses motherhood, managing expectations, and how she always finds time to write.
Writers often loathe the idea of a New Year's resolution because we constantly make deals and compromises with our creative souls regarding productivity and diligence. Bargaining with our writing vices is a daily battle—one that drives many writers to the precipice of insanity. Sometimes the best resolution isn’t a change in habit, but a change in perspective. Instead of viewing your daily writing regimen as a chore, write six hundred words about why you feel blessed to be a writer. Recall the reasons you became a writer, and detail the reasons to be thankful for the upcoming literary year.
The promise of a new year is laden with expectations. Much of the conflict and drama that propels stories forward stems from a character’s passions and expectations. Some of those expectations are achieved, others bring heartbreak and despair. Write a scene in which your protagonist deals with unfulfilled expectations. Describe in detail his or her reaction, whether it is expressed by a simple downward gaze or a violent tirade. Contending with failed expectations reveals much about the inner worlds of our characters.
Two new e-book services, the New York City–based Oyster and San Francisco–based Scribd, introduce a Netflix-like service for the literary set, offering unlimited access to digital libraries by subscription.
Mazer's illustrations provided inspiration for many of the revisions that J. Bradley made to his poems. In "Yale Street," Bradley writes, "When we traded electric currents through the tips of our noses, revenge evaporated from my body. I clutched your hip like the handle of a hammer, a box of nails; you are a home worth building."
In "Cosmonaut," Bradley describes a house as "a pulmonary system of pocket universes" where "we lose ourselves in the vacuum of Auto-Tune, drift toward the outer rims of conversations and plastic Dixie Cups." He writes, "In the morning, we will smack our lips, ruin the cotton in our cheeks; our heads are capsules with cracks in the seams."
For the graphic poetry collection The Bones of Us, artist Adam Scott Mazer illustrated J. Bradley's poems first in pencil, then overlaid in ink applied with a brush. In the poem "A Letter to a Wedding Photo That's Not Mine," Bradley writes, "May you never need / to throw your memories / out an airlock, watch / as they turn blue."
Art for Dana Guthrie Martin’s collection, Toward What Is Awful, was created by Ghangbin Kim, a student of Parsons The New School for Design in New York City. Martin, who has published two other chapbooks, edits the online poetry journal Cascadia Review.
Megan Laurel created illustrations for the title poem from Angela Veronica Wong's 2012 digital chapbook, How to Survive a Hotel Fire. Wong's full-length collection of the same name was published later that year by Coconut Books.
