Ten Writers on Writing Advice: 2025
Ten authors answer the tenth question in our Ten Questions series: What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received?
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Ten authors answer the tenth question in our Ten Questions series: What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received?
In this Beyond Baroque celebration of Teresa Dzieglewicz’s debut collection, Something Small of How to See a River (Tupelo Press, 2025), poets Jessica Abughattas, Meghann Plunkett, and Arumandhira Howard read their work exploring strength, care, and radical joy along with Dzieglewicz, whose collection is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
The 2026 Neraki International Writers Workshops will be held from June 5 to June 14 at a seaside private home and seminar space in Katigiorgis, Greece. The workshop features craft classes, generative writing sessions, small-group workshops, individual meetings with mentors, unstructured time for writing, and various wellness activities for poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers. The faculty includes poet and fiction writer Paula Closson Buck and fiction and creative nonfiction writer Jim Buck.
Neraki International Writers Workshops, c/o Paula Closson Buck, 145 Jean Boulevard, Lewisburg, PA 17837. (570) 412-2366. Paula Closson Buck, Cofounder.
Writeaways offered a weeklong retreat from April 10 to April 17 to poets, fiction writers, and nonfiction writers (including creative nonfiction writers) at the 17th century Villa Cinci and Villa Casanova located in the Chianti region of Tuscany, Italy. Residents were provided with time and space to write, writing workshops, private writing consultations, and a cooking class. The faculty includee poet and fiction writer Mimi Herman and fiction and nonfiction writer John Yewell.
Writeaways, Writeaway in Italy, P.O. Box 62012, Durham, NC 27715. Mimi Herman and John Yewell, Codirectors.
In this Green Apple Books event, the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN) presents a night of readings featuring writers François Luong, Aimee Phan, Minnie Phan, and Thien Pham, sponsored by the San Francisco Public Library and San Francisco Arts Commission.
“It was happily free of theoretical ambitions, such as being avant-garde or radical or even funny,” writes Ron Padgett in the foreword to The Complete C Comics (New York Review Books, 2025), which collects the two issues of comic books created by Joe Brainard in collaboration with New York School poets in the 1960s. Brainard created the drawings and poets, such as Padgett, John Ashbery, Ted Berrigan, Barbara Guest, Kenneth Koch, Frank O’Hara, and Peter Schjeldahl, provided text for speech balloons and captions. This week experiment with the energy and humor of this illustrative format. Take inspiration from classic comic book icons and characters and write a poem that channels the childlike playfulness of comics, giving them your own “adult” spin, perhaps incorporating elements of surrealism or parody, or even accompanying your own doodles and sketches.
Three prizes of $5,500 each and publication by a participating press are given annually for a poetry collection, a short story collection, and a novel. A prize of $2,500 and publication by a participating press is also given annually for an essay collection or a memoir. For the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, submit a manuscript of at least 48 pages. For the Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction, submit a manuscript of 150 to 300 pages. For the James Alan McPherson Prize for the Novel, submit a manuscript of 60,000 to 110,000 words. For the Sue William Silverman Prize for Creative Nonfiction, submit a manuscript of 150 to 300 pages. Using only the online submission system, submit a manuscript with a $30 entry fee ($20 for AWP members) by February 28. Visit the website for complete guidelines.
An award of $10,000 and publication by Graywolf Press will be given triennially for a poetry collection by a U.S. poet who is 40 years old or older. Poets who have published no more than one poetry collection are eligible. Using only the online submission system, submit a manuscript of 48 to 80 pages and an application by February 2. There is no entry fee. Visit the website for the required application form, which can be accessed via Poetry Foundation’s online portal (applicants must register for portal access by January 26), and complete guidelines.
A prize of $1,000 and publication on the WB Yeats Society of NY website is given annually for a single poem. The winner also receives a two-year membership to the organization and is invited to a ceremony in New York City. Joseph O. Legaspi will judge. Submit a poem of up to 60 lines with a $15 entry fee ($12 for each additional poem) by February 1. Visit the website for complete guidelines.
Three prizes of $1,500 each are given annually for a poetry collection, a book of fiction, and a book of creative nonfiction published during the previous year. Authors or publishers may submit three copies of a book published in 2025 (poetry collections must be at least 42 pages in length) by January 31. The entry fee is $25 for poetry and $30 for fiction and creative nonfiction. Visit the website for the required entry form and complete guidelines.