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Volumes Bookcafe is an independent bookstore cafe with two locations in Chicago: Wicker Park and Gold Coast. Volumes is a family-owned business, brought to life by two Chicago-area sisters whose careers have always been intertwined with books. With heavily curated shelves of books, and a tasty menu of baked goods, quality espresso drinks and an array of local beer and wine, they aim to create a warm and inviting community space for book lovers of all ages.
What riches lie in that special space between the conscious and unconscious mind, when you’re just about to fall asleep or right as you’re waking up? In “The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: Harnessing the Power of Hypnagogia” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, Melissa Burkley writes about this mental twilight state, and the ways that these daily moments before and after sleep can be used for storytelling inspiration. Read about the hypnagogic techniques Burkley outlines in the piece and try one of her tips for harnessing these moments of creative potential. For example, use a twenty-minute nap or ease yourself out of your waking routine slowly to let your semi-conscious mind work over the ideas. Record notes on your experiences as soon as you get up, and then see how you might incorporate them into your writing.
“I come up with a form and then find a way to ‘translate’ my thoughts into the form. It wasn’t always like that, but that’s the way it is now. I used to think in lines.” —Elisa Gabbert, author of The Word Pretty
Ross Gay reads from his forthcoming essay collection, The Book of Delights (Algonquin Books, 2019), at a 2017 reading in Washington, D.C. for the Field Office. Gay is featured in “Portraits of Inspiration” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
In Amanda Hess’s New York Times essay “The End of Endings,” she writes about how in our current age of “the prequel, the reboot, the reunion, the revival, the remake, the spinoff,” the logic of the Internet contributes to a timeline where nothing ends, a time when scrolling through social media continues indefinitely, an age of never-ending online content. Whereas in the past, “we needed stories to end so we could make sense of them.” Write a personal essay that extends a previously explored subject or experience to investigate what came before or after, or that offers a different version or perspective.
“If you’re on Twitter and Facebook and sharing there, there’s no pressure of concealment, and I think good memoir comes out of that place.” Dani Shapiro, whose fifth memoir, Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love (Knopf, 2019), is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, talks with Literary Hub’s Emily Temple about how social media could have an adverse effect on writing and storytelling.
An essayist discusses the five journals that first published the essays in her debut collection, Five Plots.
In this video from the New York Public Library, 2018 National Book Awards finalists, including Rebecca Makkai, Hanne Ørstavik, and Jeffrey C. Stewart, sit down to answer questions about their favorite books and which fictional character they’d want to hang out with.
“Be very patient, even patient with chaos,” Lydia Davis advises writers in this compilation of interviews by Louisiana Channel. Seasoned writers from around the world, including Alaa Al Aswany, Umberto Eco, Richard Ford, Patti Smith, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, also offer their thoughts on how to keep writing.
Gwydion Suilebhan announced as PEN/Faulkner Foundation’s new executive director; Russian writer Andrei Bitov had died; Joyce glasses and Yeats book fetch high prices at auction; and other news.
