The Writer's Notebook
Articles on publishing, teaching, career advice, current literary affairs, and more. In short, a blog about everything in your notebook.
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Wake of History: On Coming to Poetry & Fighting for Indigenous Justice
Joy Harjo | November 2018
It was in this atmosphere of rising up that our arts flourished. It is here that I began writing poetry. I was motivated by justice, but justice didn’t write poetry. It inspired it.
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Ten Things NaNoWriMo Taught Me About the Writing Life
Meg Eden | November 2018
Entering November and drafting this year’s NaNoWriMo project, I found myself processing why I return to this event year after year. And the short answer is: because I need to be reminded of the basics of how to be a writer.
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Celebrating Native American Heritage Month: An Interview with the Indigenous-Aboriginal American Writers Caucus
AWP | November 2018
In continuation of our celebration of Native American Heritage Month, AWP invited members of the Indigenous-Aboriginal American Writers Caucus to respond to a few questions about the upcoming conference in Portland and about established and emerging Indigenous voices.
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Split This Rock: Celebrating 10 Years of Poetry, Witness, & Resistance
Sarah Browning | November 2018
When a group of poet-activists based in Washington, DC, began dreaming of the first Split This Rock Poetry Festival more than ten years ago now, one of our mentors in the work—the dean of DC’s literary scene, E. Ethelbert Miller—told us, “Pay attention to what you are doing. Keep notes and records. You are making history.”
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When It Hurts, Write Harder: A Tribute to Philip F. Deaver
Diana Raab | October 2018
Only a handful of people who come into our lives make a true difference to us. For me, Philip Deaver was one of them, both professionally and personally.
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The Creepy Plastic Baby Head of Magical Writing Mojo
Sheila Squillante | September 2018
Round Baby is the name of the weird girl character at the center of my new poetry manuscript, which is currently out wandering the dusky streets of the book contest night market. The poems describe her as “mostly human, most of the time.” In some ways, Baby is my alter ego, the oddest and most powerful distillation of my shadow self.
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Going a Journey with Students
John Bennion | August 2018
I have more faith in human curiosity than Stevenson did; I believe that taking students walking and hiking—well away from the university, that center of busyness, where everything fits inside its proper box and where professors lecture rows of listeners—enlivens their minds and imaginations, especially when they are asked to write about their experiences.
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Sometimes it Takes a Community
Kate McDevitt | August 2018
Every writing group has a different structure, tone, and feel, so the trick is to find the one that works best for you. Or, in my case, get a group thrust upon you and turn it into what you want it to be.
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Harder, Better: Debuting Late in Life
Leslie Lawrence | July 2018
I was in my mid-twenties when I began writing in earnest; by the time I had a book accepted for publication, I was on Medicare.
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Story Ending Ethology: Endings Beyond Freytagian Resolution or Joycean Epiphany
Dustin M. Hoffman and Wendell Mayo | May 2018
We didn’t include cliffhangers or twists in our definitions, because they are what we consider the most common missteps that early writers stumble into because they haven’t found their stories yet. A story isn’t a story without knowing its entirety.
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Defensive Masculinity in the Creative Writing Workshop
Rachel Lyon | April 2018
It’s a cold winter evening and I’m hosting a creative writing class in my Brooklyn apartment.
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What’s an Older Job Seeker to Do?
Alyssa Colton | April 2018
Whatever your initial reasons for obtaining a writing degree, it’s doubtful that they were primarily about landing a great job.
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Why Freelance Writers Love Working Part-Time for Nonprofits
Christine Ro | March 2018
In some ways, Hannah Brown is living the dream. A few years out of college, she has a remote, part-time job working on a cause that’s deeply important to her. She also has the freedom to write about varied topics, from food to theater.
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#AWP18 Event Organizer Q&A with Melissa Hammerle
AWP | March 2018
Recently, several of us have lost our most influential literary mentors. In response, we hope to both honor and explore the role of mentorship in our writing lives.
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#AWP18 Featured Presenter Q&A with Maggie Smith
AWP | March 2018
At AWP I always wish I could be seven places at once. There are so many panels, readings, and offsite events packed into those few days.
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#AWP18 Event Organizer Q&A with Brian Brodeur
AWP | March 2018
My hope is that attendees will leave this event both inspired and provoked.
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The '80s Are, Like, Ancient: Writing and Researching Modern Historical Fiction
Leslie Pietrzyk | March 2018
The time setting of my new novel, Silver Girl, is the late '70s and the early '80s, which I found was a challenging historical period to write about. (Yes, forty years ago is "historical fiction.")
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#AWP18 Featured Presenter Q&A with Aimee Nezhukumatathil
AWP | February 2018
Absolutely I feel like community is fostered and mentorship more widely available through creative writing programs.
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#AWP18 Featured Presenter Q&A with Bob Shacochis
AWP | February 2018
A writer's main responsibility is not to be swept up and carried away by a cultural moment.
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#AWP18 Featured Presenter Q&A with LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs
AWP | February 2018
If I am writing about an historical event that is in connection to our current climate, how may I approach it differently? If I am writing about my personal lineage as it relates to global migration and displaced cultures, how may I explore this in a manner that touches upon a variety of expressions?
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#AWP18 Event Organizer Q&A with CJ Hribal & Participants Dean Bakopoulos & Peter Ho Davies
AWP | February 2018
I hope people come away with a larger sense of fiction’s possibilities for engaging with the smaller moments that can illuminate the larger issues.
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#AWP18 Featured Presenter Q&A with Carmen Maria Machado
AWP | February 2018
I'm always excited for the exhibits at Nightboat Books, Dorothy: a publishing project, and Small Beer Press!
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#AWP18 Event Organizer Q&A with Luanne Smith
AWP | February 2018
We all know certain women, real or imagined, out there are bad asses. They loom large in our minds, whether for their outspoken nature or their actions.
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Writing the Journey: Teaching Storytelling in the Undergraduate Workshop
Lawrence Coates | February 2018
Near the beginning of Aspects of the Novel, E. M. Forster states that the fundamental aspect of the novel is that it tells a story. He is a bit regretful about this, because he finds that story is a rather primitive and unlovely thing, designed only to make readers want to know what comes next; indeed, he compares story to a tapeworm.
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#AWP18 Featured Presenter Q&A with Rick Barot
AWP | February 2018
Given the urgencies within the self and the emergencies surrounding the self, each writer has to figure out his or her way into the work and the purpose of that work.
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#AWP18 Event Participant Q&A with Paul Morris, Jeff Kleinman, Anjali Singh, & Sarah Bowlin
AWP | February 2018
The author-agent relationship is one of the most important things to get right at the start of your career, or even when you’re considering a transition from one agent to another.
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#AWP18 Featured Presenter Q&A with Nathan Englander
AWP | February 2018
There’s about a million things I want to do, and a million folks I want to see—the old friends and the new writers whose work I admire.
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#AWP18 Event Organizer Q&A with Katherine Coles
AWP | February 2018
The goal is to help attendees not only navigate such issues in their own lives, but also return to their institutions with specific ideas about how to identify and talk about problems.
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#AWP18 Featured Presenter Q&A with Morgan Parker
AWP | February 2018
Acknowledging an artist's labor as a valuable and critical contribution to culture is the cornerstone of society, and investing in artists is investing in progress.
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#AWP18 Featured Presenter Q&A with Patricia Spears Jones
AWP | February 2018
On the one hand there are many writers, teachers of writers, and programs in which they work. But are there more readers—serious, engaged readers of poetry? No one really knows.
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#AWP18 Event Organizer Q&A with Melanie Brooks
AWP | February 2018
For so many, hearing others share similar stories helped them find the courage to speak. The same is often true for writers of trauma.
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#AWP18 Featured Presenter Q&A with Maud Casey
AWP | February 2018
The task is still to pay imaginative attention. James Baldwin, as usual, said it best: “to lay bare the questions which have been hidden by the answers.”
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#AWP18 Featured Presenter Q&A with Tyehimba Jess
AWP | January 2018
Public funding for the arts has been fundamental to my understanding of art and my ability to write.
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#AWP18 Event Organizer Q&A with Sofia Samatar
AWP | January 2018
It's fair to say that right now American politics are monstrous. We want to discuss, among other things, what's at stake in that notion.
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#AWP18 Featured Presenter Q&A with Mary Ruefle
AWP | January 2018
Each writer must determine for herself what she means by “responsibility” and what hers is. Would that not be in itself an act of freedom? To write at all is an act of freedom, so any form of writing on any subject injects freedom into a world where we might not recognize it at large.
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#AWP18 Featured Presenter Q&A with Virgil Suárez
AWP | January 2018
If it spent a small fraction of what it spends on the military on education, the arts, and medical research it be a completely different country.
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#AWP18 Featured Presenter Q&A with Sherwin Bitsui
AWP | January 2018
Choosing a panel over another is always difficult—there are simply too many concurrent events.
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#AWP18 Featured Presenter Q&A with Lisa Olstein
AWP | January 2018
We need it all: reflection and instigation; documentation and invention; discovery and disruption; sanctuaries and calls to arms and voyages into otherwise unthought and unfelt places.
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#AWP18 Event Organizer Q&A with John Hoppenthaler
AWP | January 2018
Our panel is relevant today, and always, because history is that which is memorialized and documented.
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#AWP18 Featured Presenter Q&A with Lauren Groff
AWP | January 2018
A writer’s responsibility is mostly the responsibility of being a good citizen: to be informed, to speak out against injustice, to vote, to pay taxes, to try to leave the world much better than we came into it.
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#AWP18 Event Organizer Q&A with Carey Salerno
AWP | January 2018
For those who are discovering June Jordan’s body of literary work, we hope they’ll find a deep appreciation for her revolutionary, singular voice.
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