Reading in the Bardo: Seeking Comfort in the Absence of Ritual
The author finds solace in rereading George Saunders’s novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, while mourning the death of her father during the pandemic.
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Article Archive: The Literary Life
Articles from Poet & Writers Magazine include material from the print edition plus exclusive online-only material.
Telling #Stories: Can Social Media Make Us Better Writers?
The effects of social media on the creative process—although it can help writers identify and pay attention to the quotidian moments of their lives, does it siphon off their storytelling energy?
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Young and Adorable: Rewriting the Narrative of Women Writers’ Success
The author of the novel Goodnight Stranger reflects on her writing career and the cultural myths about success, youth, and appearance that women writers must navigate.
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How to Live: Lessons From Last Night’s Reading
The author reflects on what he’s learned about writing and life from attending readings for the past twenty-five years.
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The Insanity and the Inspiration: National Novel Writing Month
Follow three Philadelphia writers as they join a community of more than three hundred thousand writers participating in NaNoWriMo, a challenge to write a fifty-thousand-word novel during the month of November.
Historical Fiction: The Pleasures and Perils of Writing About Other Eras
How do you handle research? How indebted do you feel to stick to the historical record? Two novelists discuss their experiences researching, imagining, and depicting earlier times.
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Indelible in the Hippocampus: Writings From the #MeToo Movement
Contributors to the anthology Indelible in the Hippocampus discuss some of their thoughts on the current state of the #MeToo movement and their experiences writing on the topic.
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Manuals for Living: What Our Favorite Novels Teach Us About Ourselves
We return to certain novels not only to be enchanted and inspired, to be transported out of ourselves, but also to know ourselves more deeply.
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My Life in Books: A Meditation on the Writer’s Library
The author reflects on his growing collection of books and what it shows about his life as a reader and writer.
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The Art of Translation: Many Englishes, Many Chineses
A translator examines the many shapes a language can take, and how cultural influence and interpretation can affect the translation process.
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Repurposed: The Long Arc of a Writing Life
An author considers the process of converting rooms from the past into creative spaces for the future.
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#MeToo: Crafting Our Most Difficult True Stories
Using elements of craft to tell powerful stories about sexual assault and trauma, with examples from work by Roxane Gay, Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, Megan Stielstra, and others.
Breaking the Rules: When to Ignore Good Advice
A fiction writer breaks up with her novel and learns that sometimes it’s more important to follow your intuition than take advice.
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Some Room to Breathe: In Praise of Quiet Books
A defense of books that whisper in an increasingly noisy world.
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Piano Lessons: Do Writers Need a Teacher or a Coach?
A former writing teacher explores the best methods for encouraging new talent.
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The Darkness Within: In Praise of the Unlikable
How important is it for characters to be likeable? A look at a controversial question, and how literature’s darker actors can pose useful lessons about both the craft of writing and ourselves.
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Why We Write: The Unwilling Suspension of Disbelief
Writing through trauma isn’t always a healing experience. A poet and novelist investigates the complexities and challenges of writing with post-traumatic stress disorder.
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Rejection Slips: On Not Getting Into the New Yorker
Best-selling author Daniel Wallace (Big Fish) has been submitting short stories to the New Yorker for more than thirty years, and has yet to receive a letter of acceptance. What he did receive, however, was a surprising friendship...
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Writing as Redemption: Rewriting a Scene to Rewrite Your Life
For the author whose new novel, The Gypsy Moth Summer, is out now, it took over two decades of writing and rewriting the same scene from her childhood to fully understand—and make peace with—her past.
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Patience and Memoir: The Time It Takes to Tell Your Story
It took Joyce Maynard twenty-five years of reflection, distance, and understanding to write her first memoir. But when tragedy struck later in life, her second memoir came much more quickly.
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How Deep This Grief: Wrestling With Writing As Therapy
After the sudden death of his sister, an author shifts his focus from trying to write through grief to writing a book for the person he lost.
Writing Badly: The True Source of Inspiration
A poet explains how allowing ourselves to write badly is not only generative, but can also break the habit of self-censorship and can lead to our best work.
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Widening the Path: The Importance of Publishing Black Writers
Novelist Elizabeth Nunez discusses the historical and contemporary challenges that Black writers face in the publishing industry, and urges publishers to address those challenges by publishing more diverse authors.
Poet, Writer, Imposter: Learning to Believe in Myself
A poet, novelist, and memoirist investigates the experience of imposter syndrome—that insidious feeling of being a fraud—and poses the question, What would happen if writers stopped viewing their careers as a series of happy accidents?
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The Art of Reading John Berryman: Waking Up in The Dream Songs
A personal and in-depth look at the life and poetry of John Berryman, with particular focus on The Dream Songs.
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