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How to Write in 700 Easy Lessons
In this essay from The Atlantic's 2010 fiction issue, novelist Richard Bausch argues that writers' manuals are a poor substitute for honing one's aesthetic sense through immersion in great literature. "One doesn't write out of some intellectual plan or strategy; one writes from a kind of beautiful necessity born of the reading of thousands of good stories poems plays… One is deeply involved in literature, and thinks more of writing than of being a writer. It is not a stance."
How to Write Your First Comic Book
Cultural essayist and journalist Jude Ellison S. Doyle (Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers) describes how they taught themselves the conventions of writing their first comic book, the feminist horror comic MAW (Boom! Studios, 2021), as well as tips on working with illustrators and editors.
Huffington Post: Beyond the Battlefield
This 10-part series from online newspaper The Huffington Post features real-life stories of the physical and emotional challenges, victories and setbacks that catastrophically wounded soldiers encounter after returning home.
Hum
Winner of the 2012 Beatrice Hawley Award from Alice James Books, this electric debut collection embodies the vitality and struggle of becoming a man. The word "elegy" is not entirely right for such energetic, muscular poems, but there is mourning here for May's native Detroit and the men of his family who were scarred by addiction, war, and racism. The speaker of these poems fights back with beauty, noticing the shine of the handcuffs while enduring police harassment, or the inspiring message on the plastic bag that holds his relative's ashes "in a Chinese takeout box". In the age of e-readers, AJB's elegant book design makes a case for the pleasures of print. Poems titled after various phobias are interspersed through the book on black paper with white type, creating moments of visual "hush" amid the "hum" of text.
Humor Writing Websites Directory at Point in Case
Humor website Points in Case has compiled a list of 50+ humor writing sites, with brief descriptions of their specialties. The list can be sorted and searched by genre (general humor, niche humor, or news satire), frequency of publication, keywords and more.
Hunger
By Kym Cunningham
You said I was unfit
for human consumption
that promises had spoiled me
saturating my skin with
lies neither of us could keep
I don't want to be our escaped goat
bucking at the slaughter
I don't want you to
disembowel me like tree fruit
letting my seeds dehisce your mouth
I never said I could be selfless
I never said I had the answers
I never said I'd give you my life
let you churn me up, skim me alive
spread me on soured dough
Now you've left me out and
the butter's curdled, the jam's attracting flies
you've begun to mold
one of us must clarify
we can't trick the starving into eating us anymore
Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body
By Roxane Gay. In this starkly honest and courageous memoir, the bestselling fiction writer and feminist commentator shares her complex and ongoing story of childhood trauma, eating disorders, and navigating prejudice against fat bodies. After being gang-raped at age 12, Gay self-medicated her emotional pain with food and became obese as armor against the world. She offers no easy answers or tales of miracle diets, but rather something more valuable: a role model for learning to cherish and nourish yourself in a genuine way despite society's cruelty toward "unruly" bodies.
I Am a Rothko Painting
By Kevin Hinkle
Canvas stretched across a frame, rough and dry.
I'm a Rothko painting—deep red,
brown, and orange. I'm February brooding,
suffocation from a lack of sun.
My therapist tells me to appreciate
my moods, to talk back and walk on. I nod...
but I'm Rothko painting.
I can't bear mirrors and self-contemplation.
I'm a Rothko painting, and it's difficult
to accept beauty’s nuclear age.
I remind myself that sunlight varies by season,
meaning depends on context.
Rothko painted me layer on layer;
now let me hang and dry.
I Am Still a Child
By Mahnaz Badihian
As if years and days were asleep
I'm still that little child
that loves her lacy shoes,
and her errant hair
that hardly reaches her shoulders.
As if years and days were asleep
and my hands still are
those of a child,
demanding another hand
to jump over a creek,
and my childish heart
gets confused by the
first encounter with love.
What happened to all those years,
have I lost the experience of
living in this strange world.
I'm still a child in my mother’s eyes,
who never left this house.
Come and see this child.
She has tamed the years,
and the moon engulfed
in her childish palms.
I Forgot, Like You, to Die: 12 Palestinian Writers Respond to the Ongoing Nakba
This 2018 post at LitHub offers a sampling of protest literature by Palestinian writers on the 70th anniversary of the Nakba, the destruction of hundreds of villages and displacement of 750,000 Palestinians when the state of Israel was founded in 1948.
I Had Buckets
By Howard Faerstein
There were arctic ice dams & bent busted eaves
in that ramshackle house in the woods—
ceiling falling, plaster peeling,
lath exposed—& I had buckets,
though of different colors,
strategically placed so the five cats,
exiles also, could lap water
at any time in any room.
That was when my nails began breaking,
then bleeding, my first term
as a professor, age fifty, having left the city
to teach argument to college freshmen.
The Chair provided advice,
just remember you're smarter than they are.
& the students questioned why
I wore bandages on every finger
& I confessed my envy of them
& lectured them on rhetorical formulas
when composing essays on controversial issues;
for instance, capital punishment:
how my father had killed two men,
in self-defense he'd said;
environmental sustainability:
how Mao's Four Pests campaign
eradicated sparrows, leading to the Great Famine
when twenty million perished & the locusts grew fat;
& we spent a class on Stalin's Night of the Murdered Poets
when we took up censorship,
also how Alan Freed's rock & roll show
was banned in Boston & later in the semester
I spoke of the silence between brothers,
of young men in India dialing wrong numbers
hoping for love, on the rising mortality rate
among white, midlife Americans,
& how I've always wanted
in the soft wallow of time
to witness snow falling over an ocean.
Then I told them about my ex-wife's abortion,
never mentioning the father.
I Think I Should Give Up Exercise
By Elizabeth Marchitti
I think I have given up exercise
unless you count the trip from the living room
where I sit, feet up, reading, to the kitchen
where my new washer/dryer hums
doing its job with grace
Silence tells me the dryer has stopped
It's time to fold the laundry.
I stand to do that, make a neat pile
of towels and t-shirts, return
to my lounge chair and my novel, feet up
I think I have given up exercise
unless you count trips
to J.C. Penney's, Barnes & Noble,
or the Totowa Public Library,
unless you count the long walk
down the aisle at the Paper Mill Playhouse.
Or the short walk, after John has parked the car,
to the Montclair Public Library
or the Hamilton Club in Paterson,
to attend poetry readings.
I think I have given up exercise,
unless you count how happily I jump up
and walk to the podium
to read at various Open Mikes.
Soon I will swim
in the heated indoor pool
at the Bird-In-Hand Family Inn
in Amish Country, Pennsylvania
This is so easy, so much fun.
Can it be called exercise?
In June I will swim
in the outdoor heated pool
at the Beachcomber Resort
In Avalon, Three Mile Island.
This is too easy
to be called exercise.
I will exercise my brain
by reading Murakami,
Alice Hoffman
and the poems of those
poets I love.
It's time to slow down,
Relax, to grow old
Disgracefully.
I’ll Meet You in Your Dreams
By Jessica Young, illustrated by Rafael López. This tender story, illustrated in rich, soothing colors, follows a brown-skinned mother and son as he grows up, has a child of his own, and feels her presence among the stars after she has become an ancestor.
i’m alive / it hurts / i love it
By Joshua Jennifer Espinoza. This poet's first full-length book transforms the raw material of emotions into visionary language without losing their sincerity and immediacy. The untitled short poems can be read as sections of a single long work, as journal entries, or as miniature worlds in their own right, composed of clouds and hormones and rain on the freeway and blood and mirrors. Each represents the daily choice to feel everything, though pain coexists with joy. Espinoza writes with honesty and wit about her life as a transgender woman who manages anxiety and depression.
IBPA Hybrid Publisher Criteria
The Independent Book Publishers Association released these guidelines in 2018 to help small presses adhere to best practices, and to assist authors in distinguishing a legitimate author-publisher cost-sharing model from a vanity press. IBPA's Hybrid Publisher Criteria require that hybrid publishers behave just like traditional publishers in all respects, except when it comes to business model. Hybrid publishers use an author-subsidized business model, as opposed to financing all costs themselves, and in exchange return a higher-than-industry-standard share of sales proceeds to the author. In other words, although hybrid publishing companies are author-subsidized, they are different from other author-subsidized models in that they adhere to professional publishing standards. IBPA's standards include a competitive editorial selection process, high-quality book design, distribution services, and respectable sales figures.
IBPA’s Best Practices for Hybrid Publishers
In 2022 the Independent Book Publishers Association proposed these best-practices guidelines for hybrid publishers, in response to reports that indie authors were losing money on poor book design and misleading promises of royalties. Among their criteria: hybrid publishers should be selective, publish under their own imprint with a clearly defined mission and aesthetic for the press, provide distribution services, and have a track record of sales comparable to other presses in their genre.
Icebreakers Lit
Icebreakers Lit is an online journal that publishes collaborative writing (two or more authors) in the genres of poetry, short fiction, personal essays, flash prose, and hybrid text. If you don't have a collaborator in mind, ask them to match you with another interested author. Previously published work is eligible. See website for themed submission calls. Editors say, "We like 80s and 90s nostalgia, nods to pop culture, and vulnerability. We like good writing that doesn't take itself too seriously. We also like being surprised and things that don't quite follow the rules."
Idiots’ Books
Idiots' Books is a Maryland-based indie press that publishes offbeat, satirical illustrated books featuring the work of writer Matthew Swanson and illustrator Robbi Behr. Books are distributed through a subscription service. Titles include 'Dawn of the Fats', billed as "the oft-neglected examination of that special place where funnel cakes and zombiism collide"; 'Ten Thousand Stories', a book whose split pages can be recombined into 10,000 absurd but still grammatical narratives; and 'After Everafter', which gives ten classic fairy tales the same (mis)treatment.
Idiots’ Books
Idiots' Books is a Maryland-based indie press that publishes offbeat, satirical illustrated books featuring the work of writer Matthew Swanson and illustrator Robbi Behr. Books are distributed through a subscription service. Titles include 'Dawn of the Fats', billed as "the oft-neglected examination of that special place where funnel cakes and zombiism collide"; 'Ten Thousand Stories', a book whose split pages can be recombined into 10,000 absurd but still grammatical narratives; and 'After Everafter', which gives ten classic fairy tales the same (mis)treatment.
If a Tree Falls: A Family’s Quest to Hear and Be Heard
When her first daughter was born deaf, memories of feeling unheard by her own mother led Rosner to trace the history of deafness in her family and imagine how love might bridge the communications gap between parents and children. This beautifully constructed memoir from Feminist Press touches on themes of assimilation, identity formation, and healing. Interwoven with Rosner's tender and humorous memories of her children's early years are vivid fictionalized scenes of her Jewish immigrant ancestors, whom she imagines wrestling with the same challenges in a very different cultural setting. The technology and politics of deafness may keep changing, this book suggests, but the need to connect with the ones we love is universal.
Illypsis Poetry: Amina Jordan-Mendez
Amina Jordan-Mendez is a poet, spoken-word performer, and activist in Western Massachusetts. She was the 2019-20 Straw Dog Writers Guild Emerging Writer Fellow. She says, "Much of the intellectual property of Afro people has always been storytelling, poetry, song. I write for my soul. I teach for my heart. In my curriculum I strive to invite young people of color into poetry, wellness, spiritual health, advocacy, radical accountability."
Image: Art, Faith, Mystery
Beautifully designed, thought-provoking quarterly journal of the arts and religion. Free email newsletter profiles contemporary artists, writers and musicians whose work engages with spiritual themes in profound ways.
Immigrant
By Gary Beck
I carry the delivery bag
and no one looks at me.
They ignore the delivery boy
and I can't tell them
I’m a man, not a boy.
I hate my boss
who talks down to me,
because I'm an immigrant.
I hate the people who tip me
as much as those who don't.
They are all the same,
despising me.
I try not to think of the old days
when I walked with Shining Path,
carried an AK-47...
No one laughed at me then.
Now I am a delivery boy
and must eat my pride.
In a Kept World
By Carmine Dandrea. This noteworthy chapbook from Finishing Line Press is a unified 17-poem cycle voiced by a solitary older man inside a house in Michigan in deep winter. As the "prime suspect" of his own examinations, he reflects on mortality and time wasted. Women from his past reappear as nameless sirens and ghosts, arousing both desire and regret that he did not value their intimacy enough. Despite the assaults of unforgiving weather and the temptation to succumb to darkness, he also finds moments of sensual joy and radiance in the ordinary furnishings of his monastic cell. The recurring image of the garden comes to represent not only the literal promise of spring but the "seeds of love" and "sureness of life" that he wants another chance to cultivate in his soul.
In Break Formation
The indications used to come
like movie fighter planes in break
formation, one by one, the perfect
plummet, down and out. This time they're
slower. But after supper, when I hear
her in the kitchen hum again, hum
higher, higher, till my ears are
numb, I remember how it was
the last time: how she hummed
to Aramaic peaks, flung
supper plates across the kitchen
till I brought her by the shoulders
humming to the chair.
I remember how the final days
her eyelids, operating on their own,
rose and fell, how she strolled
among the children, winding tractors,
hugging dolls, how finally
I phoned and had them come again,
how I walked behind them
as they took her by the shoulders,
house dress in the breeze, slowly
down the walk and to the curbing,
watched them bend her in the back
seat of the squad again,
how I watched them pull away
and heard again the parliament
of neighbors talking.
Copyright 2008 by Donal Mahoney
Originally published in The Beloit Poetry Journal, Winter 1968-69
Critique by Jendi Reiter
I chose Donal Mahoney's "In Break Formation" for this month's critique because it illustrates how understatement and the careful withholding of information can enhance the power and freshness of a poem about a traumatic subject. Families affected by mental illness are often marked by secrecy, shame and confusion. Their members may feel like powerless spectators to the events of their own lives. Mahoney captures the dream-like numbness of this family's surrender, first to the momentum of the mother's madness, then to the authorities who take her away. The contrast between his flat reportage of details and the strangeness of those details sets up a dramatic tension that resembles the "humming" of an incoming bomb.
As we learn from the first stanza, the title was inspired by images of war planes being shot down and separated from their aerial formation. So, too, the woman in this poem is pulled away from her family, her unpredictable course determined by her broken internal compass. "Break formation" in this context also suggests the building-up of forces prior to a psychotic break.
The narrator, who I assumed was her husband and the father of the children in the fourth stanza, tries to steer her "humming to the chair" but his piloting skills are overwhelmed. That phrase gave me a mental image of an electric chair on death row, humming with energy as it is prepared for the next prisoner. Perhaps electroshock treatment, as well? Domestic, military and medical scenarios seamlessly shade into one another, prompting reflections on how dysfunction in one of these systems might impact the others.
The political analogies in this poem are never strained by over-explanation. Items that suggest a wider canvas than the domestic—fighter planes, Aramaic peaks, parliaments—are simply included in his catalog of details, as natural or unnatural as a woman throwing plates. Indeed, what does it mean to be sane in a world of violent conflict? Paranoia is never a purely private aberration. Like Ophelia, or a flower child, the woman could be said to possess a certain gentle beauty in her madness, "how she strolled/among the children, winding tractors,/hugging dolls"—an innocence that offsets the heartless intrigues of rational men.
However, the opening scenes of the poem imply that these moments of trance-like calm portend an abusive outburst. Overwhelmed, "I phoned and had them come again," the narrator says ominously, as if we all know who "they" are. He lets the authorities handle the woman like an inanimate object, or a criminal: "I walked behind them/as they took her by the shoulders.../watched them bend her in the back/seat of the squad again..." Has he betrayed her or saved her? The little word "again" drops a weight of despair on this scene as we realize that this rescue operation has happened before, apparently to no effect.
The last stanza relates the personal tragedy back to structural oppression with the image of the "parliament of neighbors". A parliament should be able to exercise power on behalf of the disadvantaged, but here it is depicted as adding to the shame and helplessness of the victims of this "bombing". Perhaps these neighbors are not so different, after all, from the madwoman cocooned in her dangerous visions, unable to break out of her solipsism and see the suffering of those caught in the crossfire. A lesser poem would spell out the moral, but Mahoney wisely refuses to do the work of self-awareness for us. It is sufficient for him to bear witness to discomforting facts, letting us draw our own analogies to the world we live in.
Where could a poem like "In Break Formation" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Lucille Medwick Memorial Award
Postmark Deadline: December 22
Free contest offers $500 for poems on a humanitarian theme; entrants must be Poetry Society of America members (we highly recommend joining)
Fellows' Poetry Prize Competition
Entries must be received by December 31
Award of 500 pounds from UK-based literary society The English Association is open to British writers aged 16+
Strokestown International Poetry Competitions
Postmark Deadline: January 22
Irish literary festival offers prizes up to 4,000 euros for unpublished poems in English, Irish or Scottish Gaelic languages
New Millennium Writings Awards
Postmark Deadline: January 31
Prestigious twice-yearly award offers large prizes for poetry, fiction and nonfiction, plus publication in handsomely produced literary journal; editors appreciate work with social-justice themes
This poem and critique appeared in the December 2008 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
In My Father’s House: A Memoir of Polygamy
This insightful, compassionate memoir tells of growing up within a breakaway fundamentalist Mormon sect that considered plural marriage a holy obligation. A theology of eternal family bonds, combined with the need to hide from persecution, drew her father's many wives and children closer together but also stifled their self-development. Amid the upheaval of social roles in the 1960s and '70s, the author strives to discover her own connection to God without rejecting her people. Personal narrative is well-balanced with historical background. First written in 1984, this book was reissued in 2009 by Texas Tech University Press.
In Our Write Minds
Kim Kautzer's blog offers lessons and resources for teaching writing to young people. Useful for schoolteachers and homeschooling parents.
In Sonnino
By Helen Bar-Lev
Signora Italia
sits on her terrace
on the top of steep steps
She is so old, so white,
so wrinkled, so immobile,
she seems to be rooted
in the planters like the flowers around her
She stares at us as we pass up the alley
and is there still when we return
many photographs and espressos later
Signora Italia does not say bongiorno,
does not wave, has not moved at all
and I envy this woman
planted in the soil of her country
While I am the intruder,
stuttering in her language
faltering in her alleyways
humbled before her history
As much as I read,
as much as I see
I shall never know how it is
to be rooted here
This poem and accompanying painting will be included in an exhibit at the Chagall Artists House in Haifa, Israel, opening September 17, 2016.
In Substack We Trust: Navigating the Tension Between Powerful Tools and Platform Dependency
Publishing industry expert Jane Friedman interviewed several successful Substack newsletter authors at a June 2025 panel at NonFictionNow about the pros and cons of the platform, how and whether to monetize your newsletter audience, and barriers to discoverability of lesser-known writers. Panelists were book critic Ann Kjellberg, novelist Amran Gowani, and political journalist Noah Berlatsky. This transcript is hosted on Berlatsky's Patreon.
In the Collage of Life
Artistically designed limited-edition chapbook pairs poetic reflections with intricate abstract pen-and-ink drawings and collages suggesting forms from nature. Schulman keeps alive the tradition of books as art objects, creating an "illuminated manuscript" with a decisively modern feel.
In the Ghost-House Acquainted
Prizewinning first collection of poetry depicts the farming life unsentimentally yet with wonder at the mysteries of birth, death and transcendence. The language of these poems can be as stark and rugged as a Massachusetts winter, then blossom forth with the joy and terror of encountering the sacred in the cycles of nature. This book won the 2004 New England/New York Award from Alice James Books and the 2005 L.L. Winship award from PEN/New England.
In the Street Without My Glasses
By Harry Bauld
Blur sips at the blue bowl
of morning. The heart,
old mole, noses forward
to sense something of steel, maybe
of stone—without a lens the filth
is gone. Unrefracted men and women
regress toward a trembling Monet mean,
trees and marquees go dumb
in the warble of sky,
and even nameless cars
dodging their promised manslaughters
gleam like starlings
under bus faces smeared
to leaf and petal. Someone crosses
the street, a tremolo
of arm, a shudder of color
smoothed to one age, race and sex
as light as that shadow
shimmering off the asphalt
like distant desert heat, the true flicker
we may be. The world
before the uncorrected eye
brims, marbles, quivers
over its boundaries, wells.
In the Year of the Disease
By Phyllis Klein
after reading Joy Harjo's poem "Grace"
there was nothing more to lose until
there was. It was one thing after another,
the spring we hardly could notice
although it went on without a second thought.
It was the fabric of the human world unraveled.
No haircuts, no friends around the table,
no doctor visits. It was going to work, buying,
selling, all lost, or morphed into sitting
in front of our machines of connection.
It was grace, had we lost her or did she watch
from her balcony as the world pitched
into a chasm of mystery and gloom? Was she
a woman, or had she shapeshifted into a dream?
A tulip or a violet open in the sun? Some
of us knew they could find her, knew the places
she liked to hang out, while others kept trying
for a glimpse, like looking for someone
or something that had died. But she hadn't.
She might have been obscured in grief,
as she could pick it up on the wind, in the sun
or stars. She might have been angry,
and had to hide with the flowers she crushed
in her fists. Maybe she was too tired
or heartsick herself for a time.
Maybe she was lost somewhere until
she could find her way. The way. The way
back from a disaster.
Independent Book Review
Independent Book Review publicizes small press and self-published books through online reviews and author interviews. They also sell editorial services such as developmental and copyediting, proofreading, and book design. (Winning Writers does not recommend paying for reviews; submit your book for consideration to their free reviews service only.)
IndieReader
IndieReader offers self-published authors an attractive, professional-looking portal to list and sell their books. A fun feature of the site is the Indie Book Matchmaker, for readers seeking to discover new authors. Select a type of book from their quirky dropdown menu (options include "Fantasy Romance", "Hard-Boiled", "Based on the Bible", and "About Floral Arrangement"), then select a comparable well-known title from the second menu.
Indies Unlimited
Fiction writer K.S. Brooks administrates this online community that offers a platform for self-published and small press writers to promote their books. Weekly themed contests, judged by the readers of the site, offer the chance to be published on the website and in an annual e-book anthology. "At Indies Unlimited, we support a broad and inclusive definition that encompasses authors whose body of work is not obligated to a single large publishing company. Authors who are exclusively self-published, those who work with small print or regional presses, or small digital publishers, and those who may do some of each, or even have only some work published by traditional publishers are welcome here. The bottom line is that if you consider yourself to be an indie, you most likely qualify."
Indies Unlimited PublishingFoul Survey
Indies Unlimited is a platform to promote the work of self-published and small press authors and discuss best practices in the industry. This page summarizes the results of their 2015 PublishingFoul survey, which asked authors to share stories of being scammed by publishers. Follow them on Twitter @IndiesUnlimited and search the #PublishingFoul hashtag to keep up with and contribute to this conversation.
Indrisos
Indriso is a form created by contemporary Spanish poet Isidro Iturat. The poem is formed by two triplets and two one-line stanzas (3-3-1-1), with free use of the rhyme and the number of syllables in its verses. "The indriso comes from the sonnet but it is not a sonnet. In the same way, the sonnet is a variation of the Provençal song but it is not a Provençal song." See examples (mostly in Spanish, with some Englist translations) on his website.
Industry Interview: Talking Book Structure with Jendi Reiter, Editor of Winning Writers and Author of Origin Story
In this industry interview, I discuss book structure with Jendi Reiter, editor of Winning Writers, North Street Book Prize judge, and author of Origin Story, a literary novel about a gay man who recovers his traumatic memories by writing a superhero comic book in the 1990s.
I ask Jendi, what makes good book structure? What kinds of book structure do they typically notice in the North Street Book Prize, both effective and not-so-effective? How can self-publishers improve their book covers? How has Jendi's book structure been influenced by their North Street reading, and what words of advice do they have for North Street entrants?
Watch the entire interview on YouTube for all of Jendi's insights. Some highlights include:
Jendi on common difficulties with memoir structure (2:30):
It seems like we get a lot of memoirs that just go straight chronologically. You know, this is my childhood, this is my adulthood. And it takes a lot to make that retain interest… What I really like in a memoir, if it is going to be more straightforward/chronological, is to have a shorter span of time. You might start with a dramatic incident and then lead up to how you got there. Like, "I was at my father's funeral, and I did not expect him to die at forty-two. And I look back at what led to that". Then you go back. So you know what the payoff is going to be and why we are investing in this person's life story.
On poetry collection structure (4:48):
I feel like people don't structure their collections, and they should. I often get a batch of poems from someone, and maybe they're all good, but does one lead to the other? Poetry, I think, has to either have a narrative arc or a thematic weaving of two, or three, four, or five, themes and image sets that you're going to start with and develop. Like a fugue, like a motif that is being developed and recurring, intertwining with other, with other motifs. And to me, that's a collection that's really been thought through.
On art book structure (6:03):
With art books, there can be so many repetitive images, or images that don't seem to be presented in any particular order, and they might be really good images, but it becomes boring to read a whole book of it, where you don't really feel like it's building to anything. There has to be a sense that this is developed, it isn't just a collection.
On children's picture book structure (8:12):
With a picture book, sometimes people just try to put too many twists into a 32-page book, you know, or they make it much longer than a 32-page book, which for a picture book is, you know, a risky choice. So, you know, focus on one issue, one problem that's age appropriate, and then have the narrative resolve that problem.
On fostering a sense of unity in a book's structure (11:33):
[While writing, I've sometimes wondered], does this all make sense? Like, does this all belong in the same book, just because it belongs in my head? I think after a while, with a lot of practice, one can really lean into one's particular grab bag of weirdnesses and realize that you're the unifying factor. And if you're obsessed with certain things, somehow there's something they have in common, but you still have to find a way to sell that to the reader. And a lot of that has to do with just not lingering too long on things that don't serve the main reveal of the plot.
On using multiple genres to portray trauma recovery in Origin Story (26:37):
Trauma recovery is a lifelong process, and it's one that takes different forms the further you go along, but at different levels, hopefully higher levels, the more you go into that basement, and, you know, either slay the monster, or at least get rid of the monster, or make peace with the monster… Writing this book, and writing Peter's comic book scripts, where this character of the Poison Cure is either killing or curing people through his sexual contact, Peter's expressing the contamination that one feels as a sexual abuse survivor without knowing why. So his metaphors are telling him the truth before he knows the truth literally, and writing those scenes was so cool, to write a comic book script. I'm now working on a fantasy novel, which is very hard, and I learned a lot from trying out different genres within Origin Story.
On book cover design (34:24):
When I look at the book entries, often a couple of mistakes that people make with cover design is the cover doesn't fit the mood of the book, the cover is hard to read. I've seen books that had no title or author name anywhere on the book. Don't do that!
Contemporary book covers, unless they're biographies or history books, rarely have actual photos on them anymore. If you're using a stock photo on a book cover, it looks self-published in a way that isn't really to your advantage. A nice matte book cover with a good illustration will usually do you better for a literary book… Some of the memoirs have nice photo covers, but they have a kind of a sepia tone, or they've been manipulated in some way, where they look a little bit more soft focus, or they're inset with some other design elements… Readability is another issue. You want your design elements not to clash with your text elements. Both of those should be easy to read.
(For more insights about book cover design, see my conversation with our North Street co-sponsor and book design expert, Laura Duffy.)
On the importance of sensitivity readers (48:32):
In the literary world, there's a lot of over-sensitivity and weird, kind of ideological policing and asking for proofs of identity, which I think can be really unhelpful, but I think sensitivity reads as a practice are great. And if you want to call it something else, because sensitivity sounds like a weird word to you, that's fine, but just consider it research… If you were going to write an action movie, you'd research guns and airplanes and history and whatever it is. If you're going to write a medical thriller, you talk to a doctor about whether this is a plausible treatment for this illness, and are these the right symptoms. So if you're going to write about a certain culture or demographic, don't take it personally, as though you have to get permission from a group to write about a certain kind of character. Just think of it as, you want your book to be realistic and believable.
And a message of appreciation for North Street writers and poets (50:09):
Thank you for engaging with Winning Writers. We're really proud of you for having written a book, finished a book, designed a book, published a book, and had the guts to send it in to us! If we don't like it, somebody will. Just love yourself and write your books.
Learn more about our North Street Book Prize here: winningwriters.com/north
People, resources, and North Street winners mentioned in the video:
Ellen LaFleche, co-judge of the North Street Book Prize
Tracy Koretsky, poet and literary critiquer
Denne Michele Norris, writer and editor of Electric Lit
Critique Corner poetry critiques from Jendi Reiter and Tracy Koretsky
The Editors of Color Diversity Databases, for sensitivity reads, developmental editing, and more
Two Natures by Jendi Reiter
An Incomplete List of My Wishes by Jendi Reiter
Her Widow by Joan Alden
The Art of Symeon Shimin by Tonia Shimin
My Pants by Nicole Kohr
The Cricket Cries, the Year Changes by Cynthia Harris-Allen
Waking the Bones by Elizabeth Kirschner
Endemic by Robert Chazz Chute
Industry Interview: Talking Book Cover Design with Laura Duffy of Laura Duffy Design
In this industry interview, I speak with book cover designer, former Random House art director, and North Street Book Prize co-sponsor Laura Duffy about designing covers for indie authors. What can authors expect when working with a book cover designer for the first time? What is some important vocab for indie authors to know when working with their designer? And how can authors navigate the expectations during the design process?
Watch the entire interview for Laura's full insights. Some highlights include:
Laura Duffy on helping the author transition into the self-publishing industry (1:36):
Most of the people who come to me have never published before. So I give them kind of a heads up; okay, so you're going to focus on the cover, and then down the line we're going to be publishing it. So there's the back, and the flaps, and making all these decisions about trim, and formats, and stuff like that… if an author can start thinking about doing those things early on, it's best.
People come away appreciating that I've given them kind of a bird's eye view of what to expect. It's not just focusing on the cover, it's focusing on as much of the publishing process as I can tell them… I've been working with Indie authors for a few years now, and I was starting to hear the needs, the questions, all of the pain points, and I thought, you know what, I'm just going to do a deep dive into this world and really offer what I've learned along the way. And now that's what I do.
On working with an author's existing knowledge of design (6:59):
When we're first talking about the cover, I don't expect the author to really know exactly what they want, and that's where I come in—you know, reading the book and coming up with my own ideas, and then having a conversation… Either I've nailed it the first time and you're happy, which, you know, which does happen, or then we start to say, "Okay is it too dark? Is it the colors? Is it, you know..." then that's where the education starts to take place.
On prioritizing marketing needs as a cover designer (7:43):
I'm not just doing a cover to make somebody happy, I'm putting a cover together that's going to sell, that's going to attract readers. That's the goal.
Ingrid Wendt: “The Unknown Good in Our Enemies”
This essay honoring the poet William Stafford reflects on how literature can foster mutual understanding and empathy in order to break the cycle of violence. This article appeared in the April 2011 newsletter of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). The link below will open a PDF.
Ink & Peat Podcast
Ink & Peat is a podcast "for enthusiasts of the written word," hosted by Craig Stewart and Barb Robitaille. They interview authors, editors, publishers, ghostwriters, and others in the self-publishing and indie book world about their writing and marketing strategies.
Ink From the Pen
Ink From the Pen is a nonprofit website that accepts submissions of inmates' artwork and sells prints and T-shirts to benefit the prisoners and their families. Writers who work with prisoners may find this a useful resource to encourage their creativity.
Inked Voices
Inked Voices connects writers who are looking to form small groups (5-15 members) for critiques or accountability in meeting deadlines such as NaNoWriMo. Their software facilitates sharing of drafts and mark-ups. Each group has its own private online workspace.
Inside Publishing: The Book Publicist
This installment of Poets & Writers "The Practical Writer" column discusses the functions of a book publicist and their continued importance in the new social media landscape.
Inside/Out
By Joseph Osmundson. This daring flash memoir, which can also be classified as a prose-poem collection, looks from multiple angles at the arc of an emotionally abusive relationship between the white author and his African-American ex-lover. Like a mosaic of broken mirror fragments, each sliver of memory reflects larger themes of exclusion, power exchange, personal and collective trauma, and the nature of intimacy, raising as many questions as it answers.
Inspired by Starlight
Sparks fall like starlight
And a child runs inside,
Where her mother comforts with a promise.
But the streets have all been stained,
Soaked with tears and washed by blood
And covered over by long hours of winter.
No one knows when the end of winter
Will bring hope among the starlight
And the endless reign of blood
Will creep back to hide inside
A psyche that has been forever stained
By the treason of a shattered promise.
Who can trust a promise?
Time brings unto all things winter
Even after life, sun-stained,
Is soothed by cleansing starlight.
Water flows deep, forgotten inside
For it is far less viscous than blood.
Even so, oil is thicker still than blood
And vastly more powerful than a promise
Negotiated by important men inside
Offices guarded, safely out of winter.
They shake hands before the starlight
But with their blood those hands are stained…
The innocent whose eyes are stained
With visions flowing down like blood
Obscuring gentle shafts of starlight
Thinking wistfully of a promise
Made to a maiden with cheeks of winter
Who will now forever wait inside.
Waiting, hopefully, but slowly dies inside,
Clutching a letter with ink all smeared and tear-stained
Heart freezing slowly into winter
Until it refuses even its own life-blood
Making silently a sacred promise
To gaze into eternal starlight.
But what meaning lies inside a drop of blood
Spilled onto already-stained streets? Hardly a promise
Leftover from winter, cracks illumined by starlight.
Copyright 2005 by Dana Bailey
Critique by Jendi Reiter
This month's critique poem, Dana Bailey's "Inspired by Starlight", is an example of one of my favorite poetic forms, the sestina. I love writing sestinas because adherence to a pattern is a great way to discipline a poem, but the sestina's freestyle line length allows for a more contemporary sound than forms requiring rhyme and meter. Forms involving repetition, such as sestinas, rondeaus and villanelles, also help the author stay focused on a particular theme and set of images.
As is evident from the poem above, the sestina consists of six stanzas of six lines each, plus a three-line "envoi" or final stanza. The word at the end of each line is called a "teleuton". Each stanza uses the same six teleutons in a specific order, and the envoi uses all six words. The rules for writing sestinas can be found at http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/sestina.html
The best sestinas take advantage of the repetition to disclose new facets of the original image. This quality attracted me to "Inspired by Starlight", a poignant lament for youthful innocence crushed by a world at war. Though verging on sentimentality, this poem moved me because of its gentle tone and vivid, tangible imagery. The compact lines transition easily from one required end-word to the next without feeling forced.
The writer of a sestina should look for teleutons that are elemental and multivalent enough to generate powerful reactions in more than one context. This poem's key words are starlight, inside, promise, blood, stained, winter. The list by itself already conjures up an intense world of relationships: heat (blood) versus cold (winter), purity (winter, starlight) versus defilement (blood, stained), and intimacy and security (inside, promise) versus the indifferent, violent outside world (starlight, winter, blood). These oppositions generate the poem's central message.
Bailey plays upon the reader's emotions by interleaving moments of tenderness and beauty with scenes of pain and destruction. The radiant opening image, "Sparks fall like starlight," and the instantly sympathetic character of the child invite us into the poem's world. All too soon, the second half of the stanza menaces the little scene to which we have become attached. The sparks that seemed beautiful to an unwitting child may have come from bombs or burning homes.
The need to work in those six words sometimes leads Bailey into thickets of abstraction, where it is unclear who or what is the active subject of the sentence. I encountered this difficulty especially in the last stanza, which begins with the subjectless verbs "Waiting, hopefully, but slowly dies inside". I keep searching for the main character of this stanza till I get to "Heart freezing slowly into winter/ Until it refuses even its own life's blood". The "it" of the fourth line must be the heart, but whose heart? Presumably, whoever was waiting and dying inside, most likely the "maiden with cheeks of winter" from the preceding stanza. A clearer transition would have helped here.
Who is the maiden, and how does she relate to the child in the opening lines? I interpreted both characters as archetypes for the innocent next generation whose springtime has been delayed by an endless winter of war. She thinks wistfully of the promise that the young take for granted, the hope—almost amounting to a sense of entitlement—that justice will prevail and the world will allow you to fulfill your dreams. Still, some things about the plotline of the poem remain vague.
By contrast, the stanza beginning "Even so, oil is thicker..." seamlessly integrates the required end-words while adding another important piece of the narrative puzzle. The broken promise is no longer just a metaphor for loss of innocence, but an actual misdeed by leaders who repudiated their treaties and betrayed their allies because of greed for oil.
This return to concrete events is refreshing, not only because it snaps the poem out of sentimental abstraction, but also because it suggests that the permanent winter is not an unavoidable fact of nature. It suggests, ever so faintly, that human beings making different choices could break the spell that freezes the characters inside their besieged homes and traumatized hearts.
The envoi refuses to confirm this hope. "But what meaning lies inside a drop of blood/ Spilled onto already-stained streets?" The lives that were lost, or never begun, on account of the oppressive conflict – were they just wasted? Would it also be a waste for anyone to martyr himself trying to end the violence? The ambiguous final lines—"Hardly a promise/ Leftover from winter, cracks illumined by starlight"—offer a beautiful glimmer of possibility that melts away like a snowflake when we try to grasp it.
I wasn't sure what "Leftover from winter" meant here. The word "from" implies that winter was the source of the promise, but elsewhere in the poem, winter usually stands for the negative forces opposed to the promise. Also, "Leftover from" sounds as if winter has passed, while the rest of the poem says that there is no end in sight. If my interpretation of the stanza as a whole is what the author intended, "Hardly a promise/ Surviving winter" might convey the meaning more clearly.
For more advice on writing sestinas, see http://www.marilynkrysl.com/krysl/poems.html
Sestinas by Jendi Reiter:
The Apocalypse Supermarket
Registering Bliss
Other good contemporary examples of the form are Diane Wakoski's "Sestina from the Home Gardener" in her book Emerald Ice and W.H. Auden's "Paysage Moralisé" in his Collected Shorter Poems 1927-1957. Auden was one of the leading practitioners of the form in modern times.
Where could this poem be submitted? These upcoming contests came to mind:
Annie Finch Prize for Poetry
Postmark Deadline: April 30
http://www.nationalpoetryreview.com/
Contest named for contemporary formalist poet, offers $300 and publication.
Writer's Digest Annual Writing Competition
Postmark Deadline: May 6
http://www.writersdigest.com/competitions/
Prizes up to $5,000 and publication in WritersDigest.com for poems 32 lines or less (so no sestinas); accessible yet well-crafted poetry in the style of "Inspired by Starlight" would probably do best here.
Mad Poets Review Competition
Postmark Deadline: June 30
http://www.madpoetssociety.com/
Poets in this annual journal speak directly about universal emotions; free verse predominates, but they are open to formal verse with a contemporary sound; $100 prize.
Margaret Reid Poetry Contest for Traditional Verse
Postmark Deadline: June 30
http://www.winningwriters.com/contests/margaret/ma_guidelines.php
Winning Writers assists this international contest, which is sponsored and judged by John Reid. This is its second year. $2,000 in prizes will be awarded, including a top prize of $1,000, and the winners will be published. Submit poetry in traditional verse forms, such as sonnets, ballads, odes, sestinas, blank verse and haiku.
Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Awards
Postmark Deadline: July 1
https://www.wagingpeace.org/shop/poetry-contest-entry/
The antiwar themes suggested in "Inspired by Starlight" would fit this contest; $1,000 prize.
The Writers Bureau Poetry Contest
Postmark Deadline: July 31
https://www.wbcompetition.com/
An online writing school in Britain sponsors this contest. The top prize is 1,000 pounds. See past winners on website.
This poem and critique appeared in the April 2005 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter.
InstantPublisher.com
The best deal we've found for self-publishing. Their print-on-demand software lets authors design their own professional-looking books for only a few dollars a copy. Order anywhere from 25 to 5,000 books.
Institute for Writers
Formerly the Institute of Children's Literature, this is a resource site for authors. Offerings include correspondence courses, how-to articles, and a newsletter with writing tips and calls for submissions.
Interlink Books
Based in Northampton, MA, Interlink Publishing is a literary small press with a cosmopolitan perspective. They publish literary fiction, history, contemporary politics, art, cultural guides, international cuisine, and illustrated children’s books from around the world. Interlink has a special interest in introducing Americans to topics and areas of the world often ignored by the Western media. Their list includes many thought-provoking works by Palestinian and Middle Eastern authors.
