Relearning the Essay What our crazy canine teaches me (again) At last I’ve documented our family dog’s epic weirdness—and, well, mine. My essay “Why I Hate My Dog” explains on Longreads. Bottom line and fair warning to the rescue-minded: every adult pound dog I’ve known or heard about has suffered from scorching separation anxiety. Belle’s is…
Tag: creative writing
Erin Clossey: 45th Anniversary Ploughshares
For 45 Years, Ploughshares Has Been on Cutting Edge of Literature Founded by DeWitt Henry, contributing editor for The Woven Tale Press In 1971, DeWitt Henry, now professor emeritus of Emerson’s Writing, Literature and Publishing Department, and Peter O’Malley, owner of The Plough and Stars pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts, decided through discussions over pints that…
Pulling From the Screen
Writing: The Cinematic Technique By Sarah Chauncey One of the benefits of having worked in so many mediums – print, television, stage, online, stand-alone interactive and film – is that I’ve learned a variety of storytelling techniques transferable between platforms. The combination of having been a stage manager, TV writer/producer and film critic contributed to my becoming…
Fictional Characters and Autobiography Part 2
Five Approaches to Revising Character See part one here By Elissa Field Again, not all authorial characters are broken — but this post addresses the situation where characters drawn closely from the author come across as flat. Each of the following presents a possible source of the problem and how to address it. See-through narrator: beginner’s error? In…
Fictional Characters and Autobiography– Part 1
Writing Character: One Most Like Yourself By Elissa Field The impetus for this article arose from a small tangent during a fabulous workshop I participated in with author Ann Hood. Among stories I’ve worked on in the past, I knew who my trickiest, most elusive or least successful characters were, but hadn’t noticed a pattern until an offhand comment…
Writing: Mind the Gap!
Plot Holes By Jon Simmonds Plot holes, those devious little blighters, have a knack of popping into existence just where you least expect them. I am not the kind of chap who outlines a novel before jumping in to the fun of writing it. Broad brush strokes, a skeleton framework of ideas and then it’s…
Retreat West
Creating the Writing Retreat I Wanted by Amanda Saint [dropcap]I[/dropcap]t all started when I went a bit mad. London life had got to me. Insomnia for two long years, extortionate rent, no proper darkness, endless noise. So when I flipped out one day over a minor issue–we’re talking wailing, screaming, throwing and kicking things (very…
either | savannah brown | video poem
Poet and Content Creator my name is savannah brown and i’m a nineteen-year-old poet and content creator originally from ohio, but i’ve been studying in london for the past two years. i’ve been on youtube for more than five years, performing my original spoken word poetry and making videos dealing with topics like sexuality, gender, mental health,…
River Love—Ndaba Sibanda
Audio Poetry for your Listening Pleasure River Love Flow flow with fury With buckets and buckets Of love sweet love for my lover Fall fall for me fall for all time`s sake Rain on me fire none to put out Each time l slap my eyes on you slow I feel like pouring pouring my…
Yossi Waxman | Novel Excerpt
Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye I Die a Little From a novel by Yossi Waxman Translated by Baruch Gefen Paintings by Yossi Waxman [dropcap]W[/dropcap]hen I was young, I believed there is life, real life, with awareness and understanding and love, and even hatred… I believed there is life in rocks and trees and flowers and…
WTP Writer: Sophia Blackwell
“My audience is always smarter than me.” Interview by Jo Ely, Literary Editor Sophia Blackwell was born in Newcastle. She read English at Oxford, where she started performing poetry with Hammer & Tongue. Now an established performance poet, her poetry has been anthologized by Bloodaxe, Nine Arches, The Emma Press, Sidekick Books and The Woven…
Interview with David Loret de Mola
Performance poetry and so much more Guerilla Poetry Month was initiated in 2014 —street performance poetry by a group of artists from Zero Forbidden Goals (ZFG). Can you tell us a little about ZFG and how Guerrilla became an offshoot? Well, ZFG started as a collection of hiphop artists who came together to perform in…