Henry Wei Leung
“I was a martial artist before I was a writer. It’s absurd: kicking and punching the air daily, for hours, perfecting your technique for an encounter that probably won’t happen, and definitely not in that sequence.
Writers Recommend
In this online exclusive we ask authors to share books, art, music, writing prompts, films—anything and everything—that has inspired them in their writing. We see this as a place for writers to turn to for ideas that will help feed their creative process.
Gayle Brandeis
“My first semester of college, I took a class called ‘The Psychology of Interpersonal Relationships.’ It wasn’t what I’d expected—we didn’t have a traditional textbook, didn’t have desks.
Courtney Maum
Living in the country affords me time and space, along with a healthy cardiovascular system from shoveling my own driveway over the six months that winter lasts. What I lack, however, is a physical writing community I can celebrate or commiserate with during the work’s many ups and downs.
Victoria Chang
“What I say here might be counterintuitive. If I am looking for writing inspiration, I do the opposite: I refuse writing (easy to do if one is busy). In fact, I try and refuse the impulse to write for as long as possible until I feel that I am physically going to puncture and blow up.
Will Dowd
“Whenever I find myself at a literary crossroads, I reach for my Tarot deck. In my regular life, I’m a staunch scientific materialist (I even contribute debunking articles to skeptical outlets); but in my creative life, I’m an unqualified mystic.
Jenny Sadre-Orafai
“When I was young, I had a lot of anxiety about getting lost. I asked my mom when we went somewhere if she knew where we were—do you have the map? She’d pat the fuel gauge, tell me she had enough gas and she was sure of where we were going.
Sasha Pimentel
“In the poem ‘He Would Never Use One Word Where None Would Do,’ Philip Levine says: ‘Fact is, silence is the perfect water: / unlike rain it falls from no clouds….’ I attach to this Denise Levertov’s idea that a poet must be brought to speech—what we write must be felt so intensely, it ‘
Rajiv Mohabir
When I feel extra invisible in the world of American poetry I feel the need to write more. I look for vehicles able to carry my syncretic history. I take a line from Agha Shahid Ali and Kimiko Hahn and looking across the sea.
Christine Kitano
“When I’m managing to write regularly, I always have a collection of poems in translation on my desk. I’ll usually begin a writing session by reading a few poems from the collection and copying out the lines that speak to me.
Michael McGriff
“A lifetime ago, when I was a bumbling graduate student at the Michener Center for Writers, I had the immense pleasure of taking a poetry class from Denis Johnson. Here’s what happened. He told us that we should keep two notebooks.