Site Review: Talking Writing

Site Review: Talking Writing

“Creating meaning through personal stories.” By Emily Jaeger, Features Editor Talking Writing, an online literary journal spearheaded by Martha Nichols and Jennifer Jean, aims to provide a home for first-person journalism. Defined on their “About” page as “features told from a personal perspective but underpinned by research and reporting,” first-person journalism, the editors claim, is an…

Site Review: LitReactor

Site Review: LitReactor

Gaming the Workshop by Emily Jaeger, Features Editor The team behind LitReactor, a literary website that offers online classes and writers’ workshops, a features magazine, a podcast, and a Reddit-esque community chatroom, doesn’t shy away from bold claims. On their about page, they boast: “If you’re passionate about reading and/or writing, this is the only website…

WTP Writer: Charlotte Holmes

WTP Writer: Charlotte Holmes

Into the Grass Labyrinth Interview by Emily Jaeger, Features Editor Charlotte Holmes is a writer, a poet, and a teacher of creative writing. Her first book, Gifts and Other Stories, was published in 1994. Published by BkMk Press in 2016, her new collection of stories, The Grass Labyrinth, has been hailed as “a contemporary classic.” Holmes received…

WTP Writer: Beth Kephart

WTP Writer: Beth Kephart

Handling the Truth by Richard Gilbert, Contributing Editor Beth Kephart is the award-winning author of over 20 books of poetry, fiction, and memoir for teens and adults. She is a partner in Juncture Workshops and a professor of Creative Nonfiction at the University of Pennsylvania, where she received the 2015 Beltran Family Award for Innovative Teaching…

Latest Read: Handling the Truth by Beth Kephart

Latest Read: Handling the Truth by Beth Kephart

The Medium and its Messenger by Richard Gilbert Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir by Beth Kephart. Gotham Books, 254 pp. Here’s three good reasons to read Beth Kephart’s book on writing memoir: her lapidary prose; her vision of memoir as an instrument of inquiry and transcendence; and her superb annotated list of recommended…

Review: Dani Shapiro's Still Writing

Review: Dani Shapiro's Still Writing

Memoir: the Personal vs. the Universal By Contributing Editor Richard Gilbert  “Demons haunt your pages because they already exist.”—Dani Shapiro “Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.”—Henry David Thoreau Neat sentiment, Henry David, and it seems apt for writer Dani Shapiro, who has…

Writing—an elusive art of wisps and webs

Writing—an elusive art of wisps and webs

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]riting is such an elusive art. Writers are often cagey about the origin of their creations when asked where the story started. Not every story is explainable. There are the kinds that start with a wisp of an idea, which is flushed out after years of research. Other stories draw the writer into its web,…