“I’ve never had, except once, that happy time when something writes itself…” Transcribed by DeWitt Henry, Prose Editor These reflections were from a recording of Tillie Olsen’s reading at Emerson College, MA, March 23, 1974. I first read Tillie Olsen as part of editing Ploughshares in the 1970s. Sam Lawrence, whom I had contacted as…
Category: on prose writing
The Story Teller and the Telling
“Story is you and me. Story connects us to each other and to the world.” By Ruth Knafo Setton, WTP Guest Writer Every night for the past thousand years, under moon and stars in the Djma el Fnaa, the fabled square of Marrakech, a man tells a story. Wearing a white turban and djellabah, he…
The Minefield and the Soul
Notes on Identity and Literature By David Mason, WTP Guest Writer “The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person, for our house is open, there are no keys to the doors, and invisible guests come in and out at will.” —Czeslaw Milosz “When I was a…
On Fact and Fiction
Finding Truth in Fiction By DeWitt Henry, Literary Bookmarks Editor In the late 1960s, I believed in pure fiction, and as a writer set out to imagine and portray the inner life of working-class characters in my father’s candy factory. I also kept a writer’s notebook on the side, where I vented and mulled about…
WTP Writer: Lynn Casteel Harper
“I am not interested in writing detached from people’s actual lives.” By Jennifer Nelson, WTP Feature Writer Lynn Casteel Harper is a writer, minister, and chaplain. Her nonfiction book, On Vanishing, is forthcoming with Catapult Books. Her work has appeared in Kenyon Review online, Catapult, The Huffington Post, North American Review, Tiferet, New Delta Review, CALYX, and…
Clean
“Learning the Liability of Having” By Beth Kephart, WTP Guest Writer Everything here now is clean. My pantry picked pure of rainy-day supplies, my crisper chilling nothing but air, my dresser sluiced of its delicate slips, my closet shorn of diaphanous dresses I’d once loved to wear… My life. My words. My sentences. My stories.…
Words That Don't Exist
“I knew perfectly well what existed as emotional fact in my own ‘style,’ but not necessarily in that of my characters.” By DeWitt Henry, Literary Bookmarks Editor Critic James Wood observes that “tension between the author’s style and his or her characters’ styles becomes acute when three elements coincide: when a notable stylist is at…
On Writing: Letting Go of What’s Next
“I write to analyze. And I analyze to improve.” By Nina Badzin, WTP Guest Writer Nina Badzin is a Minneapolis-based freelance writer, advice columnist, co-founder of The Twin Cities Writing Studio, wife, and mother of four. She has been (and in some cases is currently) a contributing writer at Brain, Child Magazine, City South Magazine, Edina Magazine, The…
Remaking the Rules: What a Nonfiction Writer Can Learn from a Novel
Benefits of a Collective Narration By Anita Gill, WTP Guest Writer Anita Gill is a teacher and writer based in Los Angeles. She has an MA in Literature from American University, and she will soon complete an MFA in Nonfiction from Pacific University. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Rumpus, Brevity’s blog, Hippocampus Magazine, and…
WTP Writer: John Skoyles
“I think of myself as a poet who writes in other genres.” Interview by August Smith, WTP Feature Writer John Skoyles has published six books of poems, most recently, Inside Job and Suddenly It’s Evening: Selected Poems. His autobiographical novel, A Moveable Famine: A Life in Poetry, was published in 2014. His work has appeared in…
A Writer Learns From Wyeth
Andrew Wyeth Offers a Master Class in the Literary Arts By Beth Kephart Beth Kephart, a National Book Award finalist, teaches at the University of Pennsylvania and is the author of twenty-two books. A partner at Juncture Workshops, she has recently published the illustrated memoir workbook, Tell the Truth. Make It Matter. More about Beth,…
Punctuation & My Pig Tale
Vile New York Times colon usage & looking at the lonely sentence. By Richard Gilbert, Contributing Editor The New York Times isn’t alone in making me ill over its colon usage. But I adore the Times and read it faithfully, so I’m daily aggrieved. The usage I detest: capitalizing the first letter of the clause…