“A strange thing happens when a monument enters a museum: it becomes a lot less sure of itself,” writes Alex Kitnick in a 4Columns review about the MONUMENTS exhibition currently on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. “Separated from their pedestals, museum monuments look lost, wandering, missing their lift.” Taking inspiration from this exhibition, which decontextualizes toppled Confederate memorial statues, pick out a statue or memorial that you find striking. Write an essay about the original intentions of the monument and then think about what it would mean to take it out of its physical and historical context. How does this act connect to your personal experiences?

Aria Aber’s debut novel, Good Girl (Hogarth, 2025), follows the life of a young artist living in Berlin, who grapples with the history and contemporary racial tensions of both the country in which she resides, and her cultural identity as a Muslim woman and the daughter of Afghan refugees. In an interview for the Creative Independent, Aber talks about exploring her relationship to shame and desire through writing the novel, and how desire can be an antidote to shame but also come with a feeling of shame. “To want something is inherently embarrassing and risky,” says Aber. Write a short story with a character who has a deeply buried or previously uninterrogated feeling of shame. What are the roots of this shame? Is it tied to national, global, or cultural expectations?

Ilya Kaminsky begins his poem “Psalm for the Slightly Tilted,” which was published this week in the New Yorker, with the lines: “This is not / a good year. / But it has / witnesses.” In this first month of the new year, compose a poem that begins with “This is a ____ year,” or perhaps “This is not a ____ year.” In Kaminsky’s poem, he explores protest, revolution, and resistance, deploying imagery of things that are slightly askew: a question mark, bent spoons, off-rhythm chants, and people leaning and lopsided. Think of how you would characterize the year based on these first weeks, considering what’s happening in your own life, and in political and global events. What sort of imagery might characterize the sentiments or mood of this month?

In a recent interview with George Saunders by David Marchese for the New York Times Magazine, the author, whose novel Vigil is forthcoming from Random House this month, talks about examining the concept of death and the afterlife. “Death is the moment when somebody comes and says: You know those three things that you’ve always thought of? They’re not true. You’re not permanent, you’re not the most important thing and you’re not separate,” says Saunders. “I think about it a lot, but I find it a joyful thing, because it’s just a reality check.” Spend some time thinking about what Saunders refers to as a “trio of delusions”—that is, the delusions of one’s permanence, self-importance, and separateness. Jot down any memories or anecdotes in which you recall seeing one or more of these delusions play out. Write an essay that considers how it is that these might actually be fallacies, and why it is that we hold onto these concepts.

The subject of Cover-Up, a documentary directed by Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus, is Seymour Hersh, an investigative journalist for the past fifty years who first gained fame when covering the My Lai massacre and exposing U.S. war crimes during the Vietnam War. The film’s footage blends interviews with the journalist and materials from his archives revealing Hersh’s tenacious sense of purpose, as well as controversies from his writing career. Together, this creates a complex portrait of journalistic integrity and responsibility, and of the role of a free press amid corrupt government politics. Write a short story that imagines an investigative journalist who is attempting to cover—or uncover—a controversial scandal. What components of your character’s personal background contribute to the urgency of their pursuit? Does their commitment to serve the public good come at a cost in other areas of their personal life?

“i repeated & scribbled until it picked its way & stagnated somewhere i can’t point to / anymore, maybe my gut— // maybe there in-between my pancreas & large intestine is the piddly brook of my soul.” In “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs” by Renée Nicole Good, a poet and mother who was fatally shot by an ICE agent earlier this month, the speaker contemplates a struggle between science and faith. Good won a 2020 prize from the Academy of American Poets for the poem, and guest judge Rajiv Mohabir spoke about what resonates with him in a recent Newsweek article: “What does it mean to define something until there is no wonder left? The poem asks me. The speaker in the poem has no answers, just experiences that illuminate the tensions that arise when trying to reconcile wonder against brutality.” Write a poem that is situated between the opposing tensions of wonder and brutality. Is there a point at which definition and description are overwhelming?

One Battle After Another, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and loosely adapted from Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, has been lauded by many film critics for managing to blend tones of absurdist comedy with a moving depiction of familial bonds and an examination of larger themes around revolution, fascism, and contemporary politics. Taking inspiration from this mixture of registers and tones, write a short story that revolves around a consequential aspect of current world events, whether real or imagined. Allow yourself the freedom to bestow your characters with zany personality traits and idiosyncrasies, and to veer off into the cartoonish and absurd. How might incorporating some questionable details into the world of your story imbue it with a feeling of realism?

Catchy lyrics are often the reason popular songs get stuck in our heads, although sometimes the lyrics take on a life of their own. John Cougar Mellencamp’s 1982 hit song “Jack & Diane,” a “little ditty” about a young American couple, includes the line, “Suckin’ on a chili dog outside the Tastee-Freez,” a striking description of a scene that has inspired multiple comedic covers of the song in which the chili dog phrase is repeated over and over. Jot down a list of phrases from songs that have gotten stuck in your head, perhaps because of a certain oddness or seemingly nonsensical nature paired with evocative imagery. Write a poem that begins with the lyric, allowing associations and context from the song to mingle with what your personal memories bring to the words.

“I notice a weird thing about Zoom: In order to give people the impression that you’re making eye contact, you have to look not at them but at the camera lens,” writes Anne Fadiman in her essay “Screen Share,” which appears in her collection Frog: And Other Essays, forthcoming in February from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. “Their images are lower down. If you look at them, you won’t look as if you’re looking at them.” In the essay, Fadiman recounts shifting from teaching in-person classes to learning a new technology during the pandemic, as well as the social and practical challenges she and her students faced. Write a personal essay about your relationship to a specific technology, whether it be smartphones, apps, navigation systems, chatbots, or streaming media. What is revealed by the technology you choose to use when it comes to your values and relationships?