November 2021
The Iceberg of Ageism
Natasha Sajé
“Teaching these lenses through which to critique poems, I emphasize that it’s not always possible to separate
reactions to a piece, and that sometimes the power of the whole determines its appeal or excellence. Moreover, literature can resist analysis, and still be worth reading.”
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The Poet in Time: The Art and Teaching of Ralph Angel
Audrey Hackett
“The naked eye again. The naked eye is one that simply sees. And sees simply. The magic of Angel’s poems, to me,
is their lack of magic. I mean this sincerely.”
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A Conversation with Helon Habila
Chikodi Adeola Olasode
“…I tell stories, forward and backward, side to side. Linearity sort of bores me. I see stories as something of a puzzle that needs to be unraveled—it is part of the thrill for me— uncovering the connection between events.”
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Just Enough Light to See By: Conveying Meaning in Nonfiction Writing
Clifford Thompson
“While it is not clear whether life has meaning or not, creative nonfiction must.”
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The Urgency of the Writer: Thomas E. Kennedy, 1944–2021: In Memoria
Robert Stewart
“Perhaps the award that made him happiest was the 2016 Dan Turèll Prize by the Turèll Society in Denmark, named for the late and beloved Danish poet, and presented to Tom by Turèll’s widow, Chili.”
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K. Is For Consciousness
Sanaphay Rattanavong
“Consciousness and narrative, by which I mean an artful way of relating a series of interconnected events or story, have this in common: they are reflexive two-way streets (at a bare minimum).”
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Suggested Teaching Guide for Liam Callanan’s “The Gravity of the Invisible: Absent Characters and the Physics of Fiction”
Kristin Burcham
This essay and corresponding teaching guide are appropriate for academic and community-based creative writing classes. Callanan explains that “gravity itself is invisible, but its effects are not. Bodies in space, on earth, in literature, pull mightily and constantly.
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On Enchantment, Community, and Seasons Forever Changed in Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’s Cross Creek
Vanessa Blakeslee
“What more do we need now, in these unprecedented of perilous times, but to reacquaint ourselves with the enchantment of the remote and forgotten?”
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Dorianne Laux, Elegiac Witness: A Conversation
Helena Feder
“I do have a rule for myself, and it’s held pretty well for me over the years, especially when I was writing my first book. I would ask myself, is this something that could hurt someone?”
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