In her foreword to a reissue of Audre Lorde’s 1982 book, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name: A Biomythography, forthcoming this month from Penguin Classics, Evie Shockley writes about Lorde’s version of writing about the self, in which mythologizing becomes a method to explain the inexplicable. Shockley writes: “What biomythography foregrounds is the way myth is central to her writing of her life, her writing for her life, her writing life, her life writing. A myth is a story that explains the nature or origins of a phenomenon—a story that often involves the supernatural.” Write a personal essay that takes inspiration from Lorde’s form and offers context to a particular event from your past by drawing from the lives and stories of people you have known, both in real life and from works of art. Does a supernatural tone arise from this incorporation of mythology to imbue your narrative with a sense of wonder?

On again and off again, breaking up and making up, will they or won’t they—romances are oftentimes full of ups and downs. Write a short story that revolves around a phase of fluctuations in a romantic relationship between two characters. You might choose to have the events of the narrative unfold in just the span of a day or two, or, if the story takes place over the course of months or years, you could spotlight vignettes of intense emotion when the characters are splitting up or getting back together. Whose point of view works most effectively for the tale you wish to tell? Are there elements of comedy, tragedy, horror, or suspense?

“I love snow and briefly. / I love the first minutes in a warm room after stepping out of the cold. / I love my twenties and want them back every day. / I love time. / I love people. / I love people and my time away from them the most.” In his poem “Love,” published in the American Poetry Review, Alex Dimitrov lists dozens of beloved things, each line beginning simply with, “I love.” The items listed often play off of each other and seem to meander associatively, in a stream-of-consciousness manner. Compose a poem that uses a list format to meditate on things you love. You might begin each line with a repeated phrase, or allow the entire poem to encompass one long list. Try experimenting with associative thinking, fluctuations of line length, and playful tones.

“This letter is likely too oblique, no doubt, too fragmented. It is not in the tradition of the epistle. Perhaps not an offer to correspond. I am no correspondent. Accept this witness as a journal glimpse,” writes Heid E. Erdrich in Literary Hub’s Letter From Minnesota series in response to the national turmoil over recent ICE operations in Minneapolis. “In my mind, our city is a body, alive and coursing through us, even where sacred streams are sluiced under streets.” Write an open letter or a note to yourself that includes bits and pieces of language from recent news events with your personal reflections on ideas revolving around political power and the ways in which communities may break or come together in response. Allow yourself the freedom to circle obliquely around emotions you may feel confused about, and to depart from traditional epistolary form in using fragments and diaristic vignettes.

Recent and unusual, “fish out of water” animal sightings include a coyote swimming through the San Francisco Bay to Alcatraz Island, and a rare Galápagos albatross flying high up above the Pacific off the central coast of California, likely having traveled over three thousand miles beyond its typical range. This week write a short story about a character who takes off on a journey of vast distances, possibly one filled with potential risks and unknown factors. Will you reveal your character’s motivations right off the bat, gradually, only in the final moments of the narrative, or at all? You might decide to experiment with writing sections of the story from different points of view and shifting from more zoomed-out descriptive passages to moments of interior monologue.

X. J. Kennedy, prolific and award-winning poet who died at the age of ninety-six on February 1, was known for verses which often incorporated rhyming couplets and light humor. The title poem from his debut 1961 collection, Nude Descending a Staircase, is based on Marcel Duchamp’s painting of the same name and is made up of three short stanzas, beginning with: “Toe upon toe, a snowing flesh, / a gold of lemon, root and rind, / she sifts in sunlight down the stairs / with nothing on. Nor on her mind.” Taking inspiration from this style, select a few works by a favorite artist—whether paintings, sculptures, films, or music—and compose a series of short poems that make use of end rhymes, and perhaps traditional forms of an ode, ballad, elegy, or sonnet. How might deploying a surprising twist of humor inject the poems with a sense of playful energy?

Advertisements have been ubiquitous from the days of town criers and hand-painted signage, to radio spots and television commercials, and the digital billboards of the twenty-first century. Think back to a memorable ad from your childhood and write a lyrical essay inspired by the words and imagery found within it. How does the slogan resonate with a particular time in your life and your desires at that age? You might include snippets of phrases to consider how those words can take on new meanings when separated from their original context.

“The nice thing about writing fiction is that we can put our characters through things we’d never be brave—or foolhardy—enough to do,” writes Larissa Pham in a recent essay published on Literary Hub about how her debut novel, Discipline (Random House, 2026), was inspired by writing about a subject that scared her. “Through our writing, we leap into the unknown.” This week consider some of your greatest fears, anything from creepy crawlies to the loss of loved ones to melodramatic betrayal. Write a short story that revolves around one of these fears, concocting an arc that fluctuates between moments of slow, modulated actions and descriptions of higher tensions. Do you find yourself inclined to take the story to intense extremes or to end things on a simmer?

In “Object Loss,” which appears in her Pulitzer Prize–winning poetry collection, Stag’s Leap (Knopf, 2012), Sharon Olds touches upon the emotions brought up from objects that were formerly tied to a romantic partner—a clock, a chair, a table. These physical items exemplify the metaphysicality of human connection. “As I add to the stash which will go to him,” writes Olds, “I feel as if I’m falling away / from family—as of each ponderous / object had been keeping me afloat. No, they were / the scenery of the play now closing, / lengthy run it had.” Jot down a list of objects that you’ve held on to from people you’ve loved in the past. Compose a poem that incorporates several of those items, taking care to describe their physical attributes. What sentiments did they evoke while in the act of parting, and after?

“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?