I attended a theater camp every winter when I was in high school. Usually, I played a background character who delivered a line or two during the production. But my senior year, I got a small, yet substantial role that…
A Conversation with Vanessa Couto Johnson
Vanessa Couto Johnson (she/they) is the author of the full-length poetry books pH of Au (Parlor Press, Free Verse Editions Series 2022) and pungent dins concentric (Tolsun Books, 2018), as well as three poetry chapbooks. Most recently, Vanessa’s poems have…
Finding Your Genre: Grief, a Pandemic, and a Blind Date by Rosemarie Dillon
Once upon a time, I wrote fantasy. My mind gave birth to gorgeous characters and creatures…until eventually, the daunting task of world building brought those journeys to an irreverent halt. You see, I’d never been much of a plotter. I…
True Story by Christian Paulisich
True story, I’ve often told my peers in poetry workshops, where fellow writers gather to read and discuss each other’s work. The workshop is a sacred space where communities are built, where feedback is given and received, and where we…
La Vie En Rose by Jerrice J. Baptiste
As a little girl, I often encountered dead bodies on my way to school during the Baby Doc dictatorship in the 1980’s. We’d hear the gunshots fired outside of my Catholic school and take cover under our desks. There were…
How to Write a Book While Parenting by Isabel Mader
When your second child is born, you and your partner will decide that it makes the most sense for you to be a stay-at-home parent for a little while. Not forever, just for a little while. And you are thrilled…
Hemingway Looks at Himself by David Massey
Ernest Hemingway led a famously adventurous life, going to wars when he did not have to, hunting big game (and getting a great nonfiction novel, Green Hills of Africa, out of it), becoming an afficionado of bullfighting, boxing in his…
On Styles by David Massey
I’ve been thinking about styles in writing. Narration, dialogue, description, syntax—all these things. By far my favorite American fiction writer is William Faulkner, and if I had it in me, I would probably write like him; but I like sparer styles,…
Writing Advice from the Murder Hornet by PS Nolf
I look at the newspaper photo of the latest invader of the Pacific Northwest, where I live. The yellow ruler with its black calibration documents the two-inch “Murder Hornet.” A thing of nightmares, the Asian Giant Hornet sports huge, black, demon…
Character Fill-In-the-Blank by Rod Martinez
Our love for the written word may have been generated from any number of avenues growing up. We, as artists and students of our beloved art, yearn to learn as much as possible about our craft. That is where the…
What Do Writers Need? Sitzfleisch! by Lev Raphael
That’s the term my European-born mother used about doing anything and seeing it through. It comes from German and means the “power to endure or to persevere in an activity.” Literally, though, it’s your butt: the flesh that you sit…
A Conversation with Angela Brown
An interview by Alicia Cole. Angela Brown was born in Meridian, Mississippi on January 5, 1969. Angela works as an assistant for the Department of Hospitality Management at the College of Southern Nevada. She found her voice through writing poetry….