My first job was selling shaved ice during one summer I visited my dad in Tennessee. The business was based out of a small trailer home off one of the main streets. The cash register, shaved ice machine, and all…
Guest Post: There’s Fire Between Your Toes by Nathaniel Sverlow
I don’t know what I’m going to talk about. I never know what I’m going to talk about. Though, this hasn’t stopped me before. I just get going, writing down words until it finally comes, and, if it doesn’t, I…
Guest Post: Writing Through the Hard (On Becoming a Back Door Poet) by Allison Thorpe
For some, the term “back door” may conjure images of Jim Morrison or Howlin’ Wolf singing about men running out the back door to escape getting shot by jealous husbands. But as a poet, I use the expression to mean…
Guest Post: When You Feel Too Much Yet Not At All by Caitlin Cundiff
“Why are all of your poems sad?” That was a comment I found on a poem I wrote during my undergrad. I kind of laughed, it had never really crossed my mind that they were all sad sounding. More importantly,…
Guest Post: Panic Now, Panic Later: The Trouble with Women & Aging by Marjani Viola Hawkins
The pressure that society has placed on women is monumental. From careers, to relationships to social lives: women are made subject to multiple informal life guidelines. At the top of the to-do list, is to develop an aversion to aging…
Guest Post: The Creative One by CL Bledsoe
I always wanted to be a writer, but I was afraid I never could be because I didn’t think I was creative enough. In the fifth grade, my public school moved me into Honors classes based on standardized test scores….
Guest Post: On Drinking and Driving, and On Writing by nv baker
(Dedicated to Idiots, Assholes, Delvers, and Thinkers) Topographies are important. The feel of the land. A lover’s feel, inspirited and hearthsick; caressing hands roughly over protrusions and pressing fingers into the furrows of the terra—that’s how you write, that’s the…
Guest Post: How the Marx Brothers Taught Me to Write Poetry by Marcella Benton
Okay, so maybe the Marx Brothers didn’t really teach me to write poetry, but these wordplay magicians did ingrain in me a love of humor and language that helped seed my desire to manipulate language myself. I’m not the only…
Guest Post: The Guest Poet by Kevin Casey
We rarely find anyone who can say he has lived a happy life, and who, content with his life, can retire from the world like a satisfied guest. — Horace The bathroom remodel is coming along fine, and thanks for…
Guest Post: Loving-Kindness for Writers by Jessica Demarest
Confession: I’m obsessed with yoga. I took my first yoga class three years ago, and I’ve been hooked ever since. As obsessions usually do, my yoga practice has seeped into my everyday life in more ways than one. More often…
Guest Post: Making Piñatas and Making Time by Eva Langston
When I was a kid, the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas stretched, becoming magical and seemingly endless. Each day my brother and I opened a paper window on our Advent calendar to reveal a tiny square of the hidden picture….
Guest Post: Why Some People are Still Afraid of the ‘L’ Word by Lyndsey Ellis
I remember the first time I had the guts to tell someone I wanted to be a writer. I was a sophomore in college. At the time, my horrible grades in math weren’t enough to help me transition into one…