On screen the audience sees an empty gravel lot behind the metal wall of a municipal sports arena. Where the crushed stone stops a line of arbor vitae protects the no-man’s-land strip of grass and the handful of buildings farther…
After Turning the Graduation Cap Tassel to the Other Side by Alan Ferland
I didn’t go for my MFA after graduating from college almost seven years ago. A handful of my classmates went down that path with heads held high and the talent they’d developed during our times together. I didn’t follow them,…
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: 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….
Guest Post: Practicing the Literary Arts by Carol Park
I consider my practice of the literary arts routinely. Do you, dear writer? I’ll appreciate your comments. Being asked to write about my literary practices has galvanized me to think on this in a deeply personal and extended manner. It’s…
Guest Post: An Open Letter to My Childhood Heroes (And Their Authors) by Liza Carrasquillo
Dear Heroes, I want to start by saying thank you. Thank you for being there for me when I was a child with little else to find comfort in. When I was sick and stuck in bed, we passed through…
Guest Post: Belly-flopping in other people’s waterholes by Elizabeth Morton
Okay. Poetic license. That’s a thing right? It usually involves a mixed metaphor, a dubiously placed semi colon, a counter-intuitive line break. Wow, that’s licentious, people might disclaim. Behold, the shock-jock of grammar. Look at her go, with her odd…
Guest Post: To Find the Time to Write by Eric Rasmussen
Let’s all imagine a nice middle-America gal named Laura. Laura likes colorful sweaters, loves her daughters, and feels ambivalent about her job, maybe as a nutritionist. Plenty of things bring Laura joy: homemade marinara sauce, suggestive text messages from her…
Guest Post: Poisoned Bait by C. Wade Bentley
Don’t get me wrong—I like poetry. I write it and read it and listen to it. A lot. And that puts me among a very tiny minority of humans. No one is clamoring for more poetry. Poetry is more available…
Guest Post: The Creative Nemesis that Keeps Us Humble and Keeps Us Writing by Irene Thalden
This poetry writing is a bitch. I mean really. You get an idea and you rush to get it down on paper—because, you know, if you put it off, it’s gone. Gone, nowhere to be found again. I heard that…