Confession: I am fifty years old, and even though I’ve been writing for decades, I did not start submitting my work until last year. I earned both my undergrad and graduate degrees in English Literature in the late 80s, where…
A Conversation with Ephraim Scott Sommers
An interview by Alicia Cole. A singer-songwriter and poet from Atascadero, California, Ephraim Scott Sommers is the author of The Night We Set the Dead Kid on Fire (Tebot Bach 2017), winner of the 2016 Patricia Bibby First Book Award….
Snipping Knots and Getting Somewhere: Short Comments on “Good Old Neon,” a Not-So-Short Short Story by David Foster Wallace, by Elias Keller
Four years before his suicide in 2008, David Foster Wallace published his final story collection, Oblivion, which includes eight pieces ranging in length from three pages to about sixty. Unlike his earlier Brief Interviews with Hideous Men collection, there’s no…
A Conversation with Dawn A. Fuller
An interview by Alicia Cole Dawn A. Fuller is a Hungarian-American writer who grew up in the desolate, desperately hot, and nearly-forgotten Imperial Valley. She currently lives in Pasadena, California. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys shameless hours of book…
A Conversation with Mathieu Cailler
An interview by Alicia Cole. Mathieu Cailler’s poetry and prose have been widely featured in numerous national and international publications, including the Los Angeles Times and The Saturday Evening Post. A graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts, he…
Homage to James Dickey’s “Deliverance” – A Retrospective by Ron Clinton Smith
When a gifted poet approaches the novel, the results can be compelling, unusual, certainly bizarre; but exactly what you’ll get is hard to imagine. At the same time I decided to be, or realized I was, a writer, I came…
A Conversation with Sidney Williams
An interview by Alicia Cole. Sidney Williams is the author of eight traditionally published books, five under his own name and three young adult titles under his Michael August pseudonym. He’s also written a host of short stories for magazines…
Guest Post: In Defense of Fanfiction by Erika Staiger
Like a lot of creative writing MFA students, I’m spending my summer trying to turn a few half-written scenes into a novel that I hope might become my thesis (I’m in the I-should-have-just-gone-to-law-school-like-my-parents-wanted-me-to faze of my writing process, thanks for…
Guest Post: What to Remember While Time Traveling by Lisa Aldridge
My grandfather took me fishing when I was a little girl. I’ll never forget the thrill of catching my first fish and the utter horror at how that fish flopped around helplessly gasping for gill-filtered oxygen. Until the moment I…
Guest Post: Because of Merwin by Michelle Boland
It’s time for a confession. I have been hiding my poetry writing as a shameful secret for quite some time. Those few occasions when I spoke the words out loud to someone, “I’m a poet,” I felt like I was…
Guest Post: Writing into the Void by Sarah Bradley
It’s something straight out of a science fiction novel: a dark and limitless expanse, full of bright stars, as foreign and intangible as any distant galaxy. It’s a kind of limbo, a gray area where my thoughts are made concrete…
Guest Post: Keeping the Writer-in-You Fed by Carol Park
In my previous blog I discussed the many mandates given writers about keeping up their writing life. I question whether these literary practices are actually absolute in nature. They are often touted with the same certainty as a college education….