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A senior at Mead High School in Spokane, Washington, Langston Ward won the title of 2013 Poetry Out Loud National Champion at the National Finals held in Washington, D.C., on April 30. He received twenty thousand dollars; his high school received five hundred dollars for the purchase of poetry books. In this video, Ward recites "A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown" by Walt Whitman.
Think about your life in relation to the seasons. What is your favorite season and why? During which season were you born? How did you feel as a child about each season? Have significant events happened during one season over the others? How do you see the world around you change at the start of each season? Use these musings to fuel an essay about one or all of the seasons.
Write a story in which a minor incident occurs—the main character is bitten by a cat, loses her keys, gets a flat tire, accidently breaks something—that symbolizes something larger. Use the incident and how the character deals with it to both move the plot forward and explore a larger significance.
May is Short Story Month, and in this video from Open Road Media, acclaimed short story writers such as James Jones, Susan Minot, Peter Cameron, David Corbett, Nicola Barker, Bradford Morrow, and Robert McCammon discuss the joys and challenges of the short form.
Character calls forth writer. Writer calls forth reader. It seems straightforward—but is it? Novelist, filmmaker, and Zen Buddhist priest Ruth Ozeki explores the relationships embedded in every novel and work of fiction.
Here are seven strategies for a more efficient (and hopefully more effective) process of submitting your work to contests.
As online book reviews and user-sourced suggestion models have become increasingly important to the bookselling industry, publishers are developing new digital platforms for reviews and recommendations.
Michael Bourne suggests it's time to dispense with the typical book review; the New York Times sits down with William Zinsser, author of the classic On Writing Well; January Gill O’Neil explains why we need poetry more than ever before; and other news.
Choose a favorite or compelling line from another writer's poem, and write your own line with same number of stressed syllables and same vowel sounds. Use this line as the start of a new poem.
