Like a lot of people who scribble in notebooks constantly and wear their library cards thin, my early childhood was defined by books. There were books in every room at my grandparents’ house, where I lived until I was six….
Choosing Settings for Your Writing by Christa Carmen
Think of the last place you visited that really stuck out to you. What was it about the locale that made you connect to the experience? What details of the place did you retain and recall at later, unexpected moments,…
Guest Post: The Importance of a Writing Community by Francine Witte
Jack Kerouac famously said “be in love with your life. Every minute of it.” Certainly as writers, we try to embrace this notion. The creating, the expressing, the transformation of thought to word, the sharing of what we do with…
Guest Post: Why I Teach My Creative Writing Courses Like a Good Rock and Roll Show by Ephraim Sommers
The First Song and Mosh: The best rock and roll concert I’ve ever witnessed was not Metallica or Korn at the L.A. Coliseum in the summer of 2000. It was not Tool in Bakersfield at the Bill Graham Auditorium in…
Guest Post: The Quarrel by Debra Young
It never fails. I sit down to write and the blue screen of death flares up in my head, the gears grind to a halt and it’s quiet up there, but for the voice, irritable and argumentative. What? You want…
Guest Post: MFA Myopia: The Pain is in the Details by Elizabeth Mastrangelo
I’ve always had trouble stepping back and seeing the big picture. “Well, no wonder you’re struggling,” my tenth-grade U.S. History teacher said when we met about my failing grade. “You’ve underlined every single sentence in this textbook. You don’t know…
A Conversation with Tobi Alfier
An interview by Alicia Cole. Tobi Alfier is a multiple Pushcart nominated poet and Best of the Net nominee whose poems have appeared in The Chaffin Journal, Chiron Review, Gargoyle, Hawai’i Pacific Review, The Los Angeles Review, Spoon River Poetry…
Guest Post: On Finitude by Thomas Snarsky
I remember getting a copy of Robert Frost’s Collected Poems when I was a senior in high school. I didn’t read much poetry at the time, but I remember taking the book with me as my only company for a…
Where Have All the Letters Gone? by Diana Raab
My platform as a writer began more than five decades ago with a Khalil Gibran journal and by writing letters to my parents from summer sleep away camp. Although my first letter included only five words, “I hate camp, Love,…
Guest Post: Impeaching White Jesus: Recreating Poetry in Nigerian Literature by Shoola Oyindamola
In poetry and literature, I am most critical of the languages, styles, and techniques that many upcoming Nigerian writers employ these days. Because some of these writers do not have concrete foundation in poetry written by their own ancestors, it…
Plot: How to Drive Your Story with Impossible Situations by Betty Krasnik
In order to write a good plot, you need to take big risks. Often times when we write, we fall into the usual patterns of building suspense. We are not being unique in our choices, because in that moment, we…
Guest Post: Dishwater and Death: The Writer’s Promise by Willow Becker
I’ve been a hobby writer since I was 5 years old. It was never a goal to make writing my living. I wanted to be an actress, an FBI agent, a witch. Writing is something I picked up along the…