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In this virtual event for the Brooklyn Rail’s New Social Environment series, Maggie Nelson reads from her book Pathemata, Or, The Story of My Mouth (Wave Books, 2025) and speaks about the norms around illness memoirs and her desire to confront pain head-on through writing in a conversation with Darcey Steinke. “The book ended up being about what’s beneath this kind of quest for care,” says Nelson.
“Writing lends itself to filmmaking in terms of structuring a story, but I think filmmaking lends itself to more visually stimulating writing.” —Lawrence Burney, author of No Sense in Wishing
“Their romance has started in earnest this summer, but the prologue took up the whole previous year,” writes Susan Choi in the beginning of her 2019 award-winning novel, Trust Exercise, in which two high school freshmen fall in love and experience an intense love affair until they return to their performing arts school the next fall. When other classmates and teachers get involved, the outlines of their burgeoning relationship begin to seem less clear as the realities and complexities of group social dynamics come into play. Write a personal essay that chronicles the subtle or dramatic shifts of a relationship you’ve had in which your dynamic with the other person encountered some sort of transformation when the setting or surroundings of your relationship changed. Did issues of power, control, or social expectations have an effect? What questions arise when considering performance of the self in private versus in public?
In Zhang Yueran’s novel Women, Seated, translated from the Chinese by Jeremy Tiang and forthcoming in August from Riverhead Books, the protagonist Yu Ling works as a nanny for a wealthy couple and their young son in China, after initially taking on duties assisting in the art studio of her employer, Qin Wen. In a flashback, Yu Ling recalls a remark by Qin Wen about an artist she admires: “Do you know why Alice Neel liked drawing mothers and children so much? It’s because she abandoned her own child.” Compose a pair of short lyrical essays, one that originates from loss and one that begins with a thing achieved or acquired. You might start with your instinctive responses to personal losses and gains, whether physical or more abstract. Do your attendant essays mirror each other or diverge?
In this Amanpour and Company interview, Palestinian American author Hala Alyan talks about how fragmentation influenced the form and subjects in her memoir, I’ll Tell You When I’m Home (Avid Reader Press, 2025), and about the importance of preserving memory, culture, and identity. Alyan’s book is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
In this AM Northwest interview with host Helen Raptis, author Melissa Febos speaks about her fourth memoir, The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex (Knopf, 2025), and what she learned from taking a step away from romantic relationships. Febos’s book is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
In award-winning Palestinian American poet and novelist Hala Alyan’s debut memoir, I’ll Tell You When I’m Home (Avid Reader Press, 2025), she explores themes of loss and exile in conjunction with her experience preparing for the arrival of a new baby through surrogacy after years of struggling with infertility and miscarriages. While looking forward to the birth of her daughter, Alyan reflects on her family’s history with immigration and her childhood moving around Kuwait, Jordan, Lebanon, the UAE, Texas, and Oklahoma, and examines the roles of heritage and matriarchal storytelling. Write a personal essay that looks to the role of storytelling in your own family and childhood. What stories were told to you by parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and elders in your community? How are these stories and myths connected to your cultural inheritance and your formation as a writer and storyteller?
MacDowell offers residencies of up to eight weeks year-round to poets, fiction writers, creative nonfiction writers, and translators on 450 wooded acres near Mt. Monadnock in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Residents are provided with a private studio and work space, as well as 24/7 access to the James Baldwin Library. Stipends and travel reimbursement grants are available based on financial need.
MacDowell, 100 High Street, Peterborough, NH 03458. (603) 924-3886, ext. 135. Julie Hamel, Scheduling and Fellows Engagement Manager.
The Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers Conference, sponsored by the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University (ASU), was held from October 9 to October 11 at the Memorial Union and Old Main buildings on the university’s campus in Tempe, Arizona. The theme for the 2025 conference was “Iconic Stories: Today and Tomorrow.” Programming included craft talks, classes, generative workshops, panels, readings, and events focused on the business of writing for poets, fiction writers, creative nonfiction writers, and translators.
Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers Conference, c/o Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, P.O. Box 875002, Tempe, AZ 85827. (210) 294-3669. Sheila Black, Assistant Director.
Storyknife offers two- to four-week residencies from April through October to women poets, fiction writers, and nonfiction writers on ten acres of wilderness overlooking the Aleutian Range outside of Homer, Alaska. Each resident is provided with meals and a private cabin equipped with a bathroom and a living room that includes a desk and work space. Residents are responsible for their own travel expenses; travel cost stipends may be requested via the application form. To apply, writers submitted up to 10 pages of poetry or prose with a $40 application fee by August 31.
Storyknife Writers Retreat, P.O. Box 75, Homer, Alaska 99603. (907) 302-6032. Erin Coughlin Hollowell, Executive Director.
