Resources
From Category:
International Cities of Refuge Network
ICORN is an association of cities and regions around the world dedicated to protecting freedom of expression by offering refuge to writers fleeing political persecution.
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive, or Archive.org, is a free digital lending library that offers millions of free texts, movies, software, music, TV news broadcasts, and more. They host the Wayback Machine, which archives websites that have been taken down
Internet Writing Workshop
The Internet Writing Workshop is a free online forum for writers to exchange critiques of their works in progress. There are groups for short fiction, novels, poetry, nonfiction, and young adult literature. There are minimum participation requirements for each critiquing list representing approximately one half-hour per week. In addition, there are discussion forums to share ideas about marketing, literary craft, and favorite books and movies.
Interviews with Practicing Writers by Erika Dreifus
Fiction writer Erika Dreifus publishes the Practicing Writer e-newsletter, a monthly roundup of markets, contests, and writing advice, in which these interviews first appeared. Featured authors include Kimiko Hahn, Tayari Jones, Ellen Meeropol, and Dinty W. Moore.
Into the Drowning Deep
By Mira Grant. Masterful pacing and character development distinguish this cosmic horror novel about a scientific voyage to discover man-eating mermaids, set in a near-future where climate change and pollution are reshaping our relationship to the ocean. On a state-of-the-art ship commissioned by an American entertainment company, a diverse team of researchers fight to survive (and even study) a mysterious predator that overwhelms their defenses and challenges their belief in humanity's dominance of the ecosystem. Several crew members have disabilities, which turn out to give them unique knowledge that proves integral to saving their shipmates. A lesbian romance subplot lends a spark of hope to a terrifying situation.
Invisible Histories
Invisible Histories locates, collects, researches, and creates community-based, educational programming around LGBTQ history in the Deep South. Their site includes oral histories, a guide to making and archiving zines, digitized queer newspapers and photographs, and materials from their past educational exhibits in galleries and universities.
Irish Writers Online
Bio-bibliographic database of over 500 classic and contemporary Irish writers, plus an impressive variety of links to authors' websites, booksellers, publishers, and other literary resources.
Irish Writers’ Centre
The IWC provides a database of contemporary Irish authors and links to literary sites. Admirers of Irish culture will also enjoy the site of the Yeats Society Sligo.
Iron City Magazine
Iron City Magazine is a print and online journal specializing in creative writing and art by currently or formerly incarcerated people. They publish short fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, one-act plays, cartoons, comics, graphic stories, and art. Prison volunteers, staff, or family members may submit work on topics related to mass incarceration. Prisoners and former prisoners can submit work on any topic. Unpublished work only. No explicit violence, nudity, or detailed discussion of drug use. Read detailed guidelines and then enter by mail or email.
Is Your Collection a Book, or Just a Portfolio?
Poetry, short stories, essays, and art books—the North Street Book Prize judges love a good collection. But it's not always easy to transform a body of work from a loose portfolio into a cohesive, compelling book.
Annie Mydla, Managing Editor
In this post, I'll talk about some ways that past North Street winners and honorable mentions have used genre conventions, length, scope, topic choice, exploratory depth, and thematic arcs to structure their collections and make us love their subjects as much as they do.
Keep genre identity clear
Almost every collection needs a strong genre identity. Genre is the platform upon which readers stand when viewing your collection. If the genre shifts too much from piece to piece, for example, from story to essay to poem in a single collection, readers might feel like they're using energy to switch gears rather than to enjoy and appreciate. Similarly, a clear commitment to your genre can increase readers' faith in an author's skill, knowledge, and depth of feeling.
Bob Sylva's short story collection, The King of Karaoke, won First Prize for Literary Fiction in 2019 in part due to its unifying theme. Some stories have touches of magical realism, and others don't, but the diversity of approaches does not come across as arbitrary or confusing, because all the stories focus on the lives of immigrants in Sacramento. The author explores the literary fiction genre in a variety of ways from story to story, while at the same time keeping the collection firmly within a single genre.
Occasionally, a well-edited hybrid-genre submission can also be successful. For example, Juliette Chen's Home Water, Honorable Mention in Poetry for 2018, includes poems and prose, but the prose is lyrical, bringing it closer to poetry. Linoleum and woodcut prints by the author are directly related to the content of both poetry and prose. North Street readers loved it: advanced-round judge Ellen LaFleche called the book a "gorgeous symbiosis that gave me the chills". And so, while other mixed-genre collections were cut in early rounds, Home Water's high sense of focus made it a North Street success.
Refine length and scope
The most successful collections we see are tightly edited around their strengths. For example, I remember being thrilled by a short story collection with five strong literary fiction stories exploring temporary connections between strangers. If that had been the entire collection, it would have sailed through to the next round of judging. In this case, though, those stories were mixed in with less-well-executed domestic drama, sci-fi, and political pieces that didn't overlap with the core content. A little more editing would have made all the difference.
Art books can gain a whole new level of magic when closely edited. Narrowing scope is great for this. For example, instead of "the state of Massachusetts", choose something more specific, like "the dune shacks of Provincetown". Or, instead of "trees of the American South", zero in on "the live oaks of Louisiana", as William Guion did in his 2022 Honorable Mention, Return to Heartwood. You might be surprised at how a tight scope can create opportunities for larger commentary. The oaks in Return to Heartwood lead to a wider discussion about racism and colonialism while maintaining the attention-grabbing specificity of the narrow premise.
Poetry collections can spring to life with a little extra pruning. "Love", "grief", and "healing" are each important parts of human life, but tend to encourage bloat if made the central "focus" of a collection, no matter how strong individual poems might be. Look deeper. How narrow can your scope become and still provide opportunities to explore?
If a collection is too long, but all the content is truly good, you might have more than one book on your hands. Irene Young's Something About the Women, a compendium of her photo portraits of lesbian-feminist culture makers, was an Honorable Mention for Art Book in 2024 despite its wide scope. Judge Jendi Reiter opined that the product might have been even stronger in three separate volumes, "each of which told a tighter story organized around a sub-group of notable women who had worked together". Excellent material can shine even brighter when allowed to breathe.
I've known self-published authors to bridle at word or page count recommendations, but there are reasons for these time-honored conventions. Short story collections typically consist of about 15 stories (up to 40,000-60,000 words). The recommended length for poetry collections falls between 48-90 pages. Art books often come in at 48-300 pages—but the upper end is typically only for material that is especially conceptually/visually rich, or already famous. That said, even well-known artists don't necessarily demand a large page count. One of our best Art Book submissions ever, The Art of Symeon Shimin, about the life and work of a renowned and historically important Russian-American Jewish painter, gives readers a truly powerful experience at a modest 156 pages. Remember, whether your book is prose, poetry, or art, you're creating a curated experience for the reader, not just including content because it's there.
Sell your subject to the reader
You already know your topic is important, so be sure to show the reader why it's worth organizing a book around! Introductions are okay for this, but what's really important is what your book includes and how it's contextualized. Jeff Shelton's The Fig District: Some Buildings in Downtown Santa Barbara, First Prize for Art Book in 2024, isn't just "pictures of buildings". The camera angles and the juxtapositions of fascinating patterns and building materials give a sense of urgency, attention, and love beyond what words could say. The text recounts how Shelton and his team of artisans solved unique design challenges for buildings in this historic district. Take time to investigate your passion for your subject, then share it with readers through your content choices.
Keep topics fresh
If your collection seems bloated, it's almost always worth checking for types of material that have occurred in, or could occur in, someone else's book. That content could risk being perceived by judges as dead weight unless the angle and craft approach are substantially different from what we usually see. For example, we often receive:
*Art books about sunsets and the beach
*Poetry collections about love, loss, and life wisdom
*Story and essay collections about topics like domestic drama, sexual abuse, cancer, and the counterculture of the 1960s and '70s
Shout it to the masses, carve it on my tombstone: If you want to get the attention of contest judges, agents, or magazine editors, then part of being a book creator is knowing what tropes are common in your field, then learning how to avoid, subvert, or build on those tropes. It might take work, but that can become a source of creative inspiration in its own right.
Go deep, not wide
North Street judges love to see topics plumbed to the bottom of their inky depths. We want books that reveal facets of the topic that normal people never see, then show us the surprising and intimate ways they relate to our lives. Similarly, a wider, shallower focus can be less exciting to judges.
You can make us enthusiastic about your work by using a small number of topics intensively and creating interactions between pieces. Jendi once commented that although a poetry collection's individual poems might be good, it's important that one poem lead to the next:
Poetry, I think, has to either have a narrative arc or a thematic weaving of around two to 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, and intertwining with other motifs.
The same criteria apply to short stories, short essays, and art books. How are the themes, tone, and craft patterns developed from one piece to the next?
Build an emotional arc
A sense of "building" is important to us, too. Jendi comments that even if an art book has good images, the book needs to feel like it's building to something—that it isn't "just a collection". We're looking for an emotional arc that creates feelings of forward movement, escalation of tension, and then catharsis and release—whether the medium is prose, poetry, or visual art.
When thematic building happens, the results can be outstanding. According to Their Kinds, a short story collection by Abigail Anklam that won Honorable Mention for Literary Fiction in 2019, was highly focused on non-anthropomorphized animals and topics like extinction, animal intelligence, and the exploitation of animals. Themes are developed from piece to piece, contributing to the collection's sense of suspense: where among these ideas and images will the author take us next? How high can the arc of emotion truly reach?
Conclusion
North Street judges have been blessed by wonderful collections over the years, and we're looking forward to many more. I hope this discussion of our favorites' strengths inspires you to find opportunities for expression through genre identity, length, scope, topic choice, exploratory depth, and the formation of emotional arcs. Building up those skills can transform a portfolio into a polished, professional book.
Is Your First-Person Narrator Hurting Your Story?
Is your first-person narrator hurting your story? Ten traps to watch out for, and resources that can help.
Annie Mydla, Managing Editor
The author wants the reader to feel close to the story, characters, and narrative voice. They believe that first-person narration will make readers experience the story as they do. Why not? The reader will "see" and "feel" everything in the same order, and in the same detail, as the author does in their head. This approach may seem common-sensical, but reader experience doesn't exactly work that way.
Recreating the environment we see and feel in our heads through a first-person narrator rarely achieves the author's intent. It's not artful enough. Good fiction is successful not because it draws from the "common sense" we know from everyday life, but because its author has become an expert at creating an artificially immersive experience for the reader. That takes a whole different set of rules and tools.
From this point of view, first-person narration is like the "hard mode" of fiction writing due to the temptation of using "common sense". It can lead writers to collapse tension, reduce reader investment, and diminish the authority of the storytelling. Read on to ensure your first-person narrator isn't falling into these ten traps.
The narrator is a glove puppet for the plot
An author has come up with an amazing plot, and they want it to stand out. They leave their first-person narrator undefined, or vaguely defined, to allow the maximum number of readers to project themselves into the narrative.
It might feel logical to help one narrative element stand out by toning down another, but watch out. A disembodied "I" immerses readers less than a narrator who feels specific and concrete. That's because a book feels most like "a real book" when all of the ingredients are used in the right balance: Plot, character, setting, theme, mood, tone, atmosphere, motif, and more. Dial any of these down too much, and readers instinctively lose investment.
For more information on what makes a strong first-person narrator, check out these articles from Now Novel and Writing Mastery. The exercises on my blog post about one-dimensional protagonists might also help.
The narrator is all interiority and no material context
You're reading a book with a first-person narrator. After five pages, you realize you still don't know the setting, the time period, the genre, who the narrator is, who the other characters are, what their relationship is, or what kind of plot you can look forward to. The narrative is so far inside the first-person narrator's head that there's little concrete information for the reader to hold on to.
Winning Writers editor and North Street Book Prize judge Jendi Reiter describes the problem this way: "[Some] authors start too soon within the subjective experience, and don't bother with the setting or the material details of who this person is."
While it might seem like good sense to create a feeling of mystery by withholding information from the reader, it can backfire, especially when writing in first person. Readers need a certain amount of information to feel interested. The time for perspective shifts, plot twists, and withholding information is in the rising action, when the reader has already become oriented in the narrative.
Exercise: Read these articles from Writers Helping Readers, Georgina Green, and Reedsy, then look at your exposition. Does it contain answers to the following questions: What, when, where, why, who, how? Is your exposition setting up reader expectations for later? If not, how can your exposition be changed to fulfill those functions while staying immersive?
The narrator is an excuse to "tell" and not "show"
"Writers are at their best not when they tell people what to think, but when they provide a context within which others can think." (from How to Know a Person, by David Brooks)
Writing in first person is like the hard mode of "showing, not telling" due to the dominance of the character's point of view. Yes, it is the privilege of the first-person perspective that more telling feels okay compared to third person, but sometimes authors can take it too far. With unlimited access to the character's thoughts, authors are sometimes tempted to really make sure readers understand what's going on.
This can lead to a flattening of the narrative through redundancy or just plain over-simplicity. Here's an example: ("telling" parts in bold):
I sat miserably in my chair, biting my fingernails. I felt so upset. Rachel had tripped me on my way into the classroom that morning, and her friends had laughed. They were bullying me. I raised my hand in order to get the teacher's attention. The teacher noticed, but didn't call on me. She was ignoring me!
Here, the bolded sentences prioritize plain information over providing an immersive experience. They unnecessarily repeat what the un-bolded sentences have already demonstrated. The paragraph gets stronger when the "telling" language is removed:
I sat miserably in my chair, biting my fingernails. Rachel had tripped me on my way into the classroom that morning, and her friends had laughed. I raised my hand. The teacher noticed, but didn't call on me.
If you'd like to learn more about showing and telling in the first person, these articles from The Habit and Inkthinker can provide some good context.
The narrator is overly observant
Have you ever met someone who had to comment on everything they saw? While this can make a person fun to talk to in real life, it can also make it hard to have a straightforward conversation. And when it's a first-person narrator who's over-commenting, the excess detail can obscure the main plotline.
I mainly find the overly observant narrator in novels with worldbuilding: sci-fi, fantasy, and historical fiction. The author wants to make sure the reader is "seeing" every interesting aspect of the built world. When those details aren't supporting the plot, though, it can lag the pace and make the reader feel less invested.
Exercise: Read this novel excerpt from Roz Morris, then do a line edit for excess detail. For everything the narrator "sees", ask: Does this support the main plot or themes? Does it foreshadow? Is essential characterization provided by the way the narrator thinks about it? Is it contributing to atmosphere or tone? Does it feature in the story later? If the answer is no, that detail might be better left out, or replaced with one that supports other elements in the story.
The narrator is static
Even when the first-person narrator has an interesting character profile, the narrative will likely feel flattened if there's no character growth. "But my book is plot-driven, not character-driven," some authors respond. Fair enough. But even plot-driven novels have character growth—especially high-interiority books, like those with first-person narrators.
The difference between plot-driven and character-driven books comes down to emphasis. In a character-driven book, each plot point supports the character's inner journey of change. In a plot-driven book, the main character still grows, but each stage of character growth supports the forward movement of the plot. Both types of books have plot development and character development—they just perform different functions.
Exercise: Read this article about balancing plot and character development by Jami Gold, then journal on your first-person narrator's growth arc. What about your narrator is different in the falling action than it was in the exposition? When the climax happens, what change in the narrator is it catalyzing? What in the rising action is foreshadowing this change? How is the change reflected in the narrator's attitudes, speech, and behavior toward other characters?
The narrator sounds too old or too young
It's important to get the "age" of a first-person voice right, or risk losing believability. Jendi observes that we often receive books with young narrators whose "observations, references, or syntax sound too adult," as well as teen or new adult narrators who sound "developmentally younger (simplistic reactions, no awareness of issues outside their immediate personal life, immature dependence on peers' opinions)." Narrators with the wrong-aged voice can jolt a reader out of the story.
Fortunately, there are resources to help authors achieve a believable voice for their character's age: here's Writers and Artists on writing like a child, DIY MFA on middle-grade narrators, and Sophia Whittemore on first-person teenagers. Lit Hub has a thought-provoking article on how fiction treats the elderly, and this forum discussion on writing older characters is full of good insights.
If your first-person narrator is a different age from you—or even if they're the same age—it might be worthwhile to spend a week or two developing their voice to make it sound realistic to readers. Harking back to the "glove-puppet narrator", above, it's not safe to assume that the common-sense knowledge about age you have from real life will translate into a realistic voice on the page.
The narrator's views become the book's views
One of the most distressing experiences for me as a contest judge and book critiquer is when a first-person narrator has prejudiced views, and it's impossible to figure out if it's just that character who is flawed, or if the book/author endorses those views. Nine times out of ten, this problem arises from a problem of tone: the distance between the narratorial voice and the authorial voice has collapsed.
Jendi describes the problem this way: "The first-person narrator has prejudices or uses problematic language, and because we're limited to their point of view, it is not clear whether the book endorses those attitudes. Too many authors think that a first-person character voice automatically creates critical distance, but no. The story still has to show some pushback, either from other characters, from the point-of-view character changing, or from the facts around them."
The authors I talk to about this rarely intended to have the entire book come across as prejudiced. But while they as authors knew how they stood on the issues, those perspectives never made it to the page.
How can an author create space for contrasting and contextualizing information in a first-person story? There are multiple ways. Making choices in the wider narrative that disprove the narrator's opinions can help, as Mythcreants points out. This article from Gotham Writers shows how to incorporate other characters' thoughts into first-person narration. Electric Lit demonstrates how making a narrator obviously unreliable can challenge their prejudices, and also gives good examples of when it didn't work so well.
If your book takes on prejudices, it might be worthwhile to reconsider whether first-person narration is the best choice for what you want to communicate. Researching the basic functions of first-, second-, and third-person and experimenting with alternate POVs in your manuscript could boost your book's credibility and effectiveness in the long run. Jericho Writers and The Novelry both have straightforward and comprehensive overviews of the POVs and where they work best.
The narrator takes over the book
The author has a character in mind and wants the reader to experience that person the same way they do. They choose a first-person narrator to make the reader really close to that character. Anything else that happens in the book—plot, other characters, setting, theme—comes a distant second to the narrator, their thoughts, and their reactions to things.
The takeover narrator often appears when the first-person figure is a proxy for the author. I see it often in memoirs and fictionalized memoirs, and also in genre fiction, literary fiction, and poetry. My interest plummets if I notice that the first-person narrator has taken over. To me, it's a sign that the author is writing the book as a personal processing tool rather than as an immersive experience for readers.
The first-person narrator who takes over also often has other problems, like being too self-congratulatory, too often correct, remaining static, and solving every problem too quickly. Believability suffers in these cases. Most good fiction leaves room for ambivalence—contrasting emotions and attitudes that exist at the same moment. Too much certainty, success, and correctness in the narrator can lead readers to suspect that parts of the narrative are being left out, parts that would have shown its events (and the narrator's part in them) in a fuller light.
If your project is in first person and you haven't yet considered whether the narrative voice is balanced with the plot, it could be a good idea to look into it. Ideas on how can be found in these articles from ThoughtCo (the section entitled "The Demands of the First-Person Singular") and Alyssa Matesic (item #3, "Alienating Readers").
Reading up on how first person is used in memoirs can help, with many of the same insights applying to fiction. Brooke Warner's article on self-referentiality and Jane Friedman's observations on POV in memoir are great resources.
The narrator's first-person combines with present tense to flatten the narrative
An author wants readers to feel the immediacy of a character's experience, so they couple the use of first-person narration with the present tense (example: "I walk to campus with Julie. We're talking about John when I see him crossing over the green towards us.") Again, though, this common-sensical approach can backfire if used without careful consideration.
Jendi describes the problem: "In general, I read too many books nowadays with first-person, present-tense narration (traditionally published, as well as in the North Street competition). The present tense deprives the POV character of the temporal complexity that a novel, as opposed to a movie, can provide—the ability to look backward, forward, introspect, and go beyond blow-by-blow external action."
If you find your first-person present narrative feels flat, it might be time to think about moving to past tense and/or third-person to open up the range of literary tools at your disposal. The articles mentioned above by Jericho Writers and The Novelry could be helpful for analyzing POV choices, and Writer's Digest has an excellent write-up about choosing tense and POV together.
The narrator starts too many sentences with "I"
The last trap first-person narration can lay is stylistic: it tempts authors to start sentences with "I". It's not a sin to start sentences with "I", but it can be a flow-killer beyond a certain point. Take, for example, this paragraph:
I sat upright in bed. Where was that noise coming from? I fumbled to turn on the light, and at the same time I used my feet to search the floor for slippers. I could hear a scratching under the floorboards. I almost didn't get out of bed, I was so scared.
When there's this much repetition in sentence structure, the writing can look inorganic on the page and cause the reader to lose immersivity. Rewriting to remove the majority of "I"s helps pacing and focus:
I sat upright in bed. Where was that noise coming from? My fingers fumbled for the light switch while my feet searched the floor for my slippers. That scratching—it couldn't be from under the floorboards? My feet shrank back up to the mattress.
Having to leave the "I"s behind didn't just reduce repetition, it gave me the opportunity to introduce new literary devices that added interest: personification ("my fingers fumbled", "my feet searched", "my feet shrank") and free internal discourse ("That scratching—it couldn't be from under the floorboards?")
Line editing for "I" sentences is usually a good idea when writing in first-person. These articles from Writing Classes, Louise Harnby, and Liminal Pages discuss the problem and suggest different sentence openers.
Choosing the right point of view for your narrative, be it first-, second-, or third-person, is only one part of what makes writing a novel different from everyday communication. A great novelist can tap a wide range of literary skills. For a detailed description of the key differences between writing "a real book" and simply "telling a story", see this article from The Editor's Blog. Or, for a more personal analysis of your work-in-progress (novel or memoir), submit it to our Critique Service.
Is Your Memoir Really Just Venting?
Writing about your personal experiences can be therapeutic, but turning that writing into a general-interest work of nonfiction requires more objective craft choices.
—Annie Mydla, Managing Editor
Some books submitted in the Memoir category of the North Street Book Prize read more like private journals, suggesting that the author might still be in the trenches of processing their experiences. And, sometimes, these books read like plain ol' venting. Winning Writers is looking for more polished memoirs that show maturity in topic choice, main argument, structure, prose style, depth of perspective, and more. Read on to learn what, for us, feels like memoir and what feels like venting.
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Book topics: Venting
My topic has been written about by other authors in similar ways, but I'm expecting my book to rise to the top of the field because this time, the topic concerns me.
Book topics: Memoir
My topic is unique and strongly attractive to readers. I know that there are few, if any, books that already cover it, or cover it in the same way.
Unique topics or angles are a must for North Street winners in Creative Nonfiction & Memoir. We receive many submissions about love, death, sickness, caregiving, and family histories, and while these are important topics, the angles chosen by the authors can be too general to stand out from similar entries. We get enthusiastic when we come across topics and angles we've never seen before.
For example, the 2020 First Prize memoir winner was Alicia Doyle's Fighting Chance, about her career as a female boxer. In 2024, Circus Smirkus founder Rob Mermin's Circle of Sawdust: A Circus Memoir of Mud, Myth, Mirth, Mayhem, and Magic took top honors in this genre. These one-of-a-kind topics boosted both books right to the top of our shortlists.
Meanwhile, 2023 Honorable Mention Sarah Birnbach's A Daughter's Kaddish: My Year of Grief, Devotion, and Healing was about mourning the loss of a parent, a topic we often see. But Birnbach's memoir has a unique angle, focusing on eleven months in which she said the Kaddish—traditionally only a prayer to be made by males, and requiring a quorum of ten people—for her father twice a day. We were fascinated by the personal, religious, social, and political complications of this moving story.
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Choice of story: Venting
The story I'm telling uses another person's struggles or suffering to magnify my own actions, emotions, and sense of self. I depict loved ones in vulnerable moments that show a) how difficult they are making my life or b) what a good person I am.
Choice of story: Memoir
The story is truly mine to tell. I do not exploit others' struggles or suffering. When applicable, I address any potential biases on my part (privilege, classism, racism, and more).
When choosing a story to tell, memoirists sometimes have to ask themselves difficult questions about ownership: "Is this story truly mine, or is it my interpretation of someone else's?" "In telling this story, am I planning to use someone else's struggle to create interest in, and ultimately sell, my work?" "Am I telling this story for my own sake, or for the sake of the person or community it happened to?"
Depending on the answers to these questions, follow-ups might be, "Does my purpose in telling this story, or the way I plan to tell it, keep the telling from being exploitative?" and "Will my telling of this story benefit the person or community it actually happened to?" If the answer to either of these questions is no, it might be good to keep searching until you find a story that's truly yours to tell.
As Waters Gone By, a 2021 Honorable Mention memoir by Asome Bide, is about a landslide in Bide's country of origin, Cameroon. Bide's connection to the event is close: It directly impacted his home community and family, some of whom perished in the disaster. As a narrator, Bide never courts the reader through exploitative depictions of others' suffering. Instead, he analyzes complex social, spiritual, family, political, and geopolitical currents vis-à-vis the landslide and its aftermath, to help readers understand why it may have happened and how to prevent another one.
Her Widow, Honorable Mention in 2019, consists of author Joan Alden's letters to her late wife, Catherine Hopkins, who passed away from ovarian cancer. Alden does show the slow process of Hopkins's death. However, final judge Ellen LaFleche noted that she "does so in a way that honors Catherine's bodily privacy while honoring their enduring love for each other." The narrative emphasis is on the writer's reaction to the loss and how social, cultural, and familial issues shaped her experience of grief.
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Structure: Venting
My book is episodic and stream-of-consciousness, like a journal, and lacks a strong climax.
Structure: Memoir
My story's structure is intentionally crafted to maximize the impact of the material.
Many of the memoirs we receive simply tell their story from beginning to end. There's nothing wrong with that, and sometimes it really is the best choice. Sometimes, though, it pays to play with structure if it helps to build tension and interest. An author might go back and forth in time, hold back certain information until later, use vignettes, play with pacing, or explore other structural techniques.
Our 2021 Grand Prize, C. Vargas McPherson's memoir Inheriting Our Names, uses a braided narrative, moving between past and present storylines. Her grandparents' lives during the Spanish Civil War provide most of the book's drama and forward movement, with Vargas's present-day life included when it shows the long-term impacts of those events.
Francesco Granieri's Pavarotti and Pancakes, the First Prize memoir in 2018, is a family saga that uses a circular narrative. It opens with a family crisis in the "present" of the book, then skips back to an earlier part of the family's history and proceeds chronologically to the present. When we see the episode again, we recognize the characters from the first time, but, having come to know them as they were before, we feel a new level of empathy for them.
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Main arguments: Venting
My book has no main argument or a vague main argument.
Main arguments: Memoir
My book has a strong main argument that it develops with every artistic choice.
Virtually all successful mainstream books, fiction or nonfiction, have an underlying argument. The temptation with memoir is to let that argument be general or vague, for example, "this is how I came to be who I am today". North Street judges are looking for books that get more specific in their underlying arguments.
In She's Such a Bright Girl, Honorable Mention in 2018, author Petula Caesar identifies parallels between racism, colorism, classism, sexism, and colonialism, and demonstrates how these dynamics played out in her own family. In creative nonfiction, "developing an argument" doesn't mean academic-style writing, but using literary devices to envelop the author in scenes showing what the author is talking about. Caesar's style is accessible and immersive, with powerful scenes using setting, sensory detail, character words, emotions, and more.
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What to keep in and what to leave out: Venting
I'm including this episode because it happened to me, or because I feel strongly about it.
What to keep in and what to leave out: Memoir
I choose to include an episode when, as well as supporting my main argument, it intersects with social, political, emotional, psychological, or other elements that the reader is eager to know more about.
A memoir is your chance to say whatever you want, which can be incredibly satisfying and validating. Keep in mind, though, that readers' purchasing choices (and North Street judges' judging choices!) are guided by their interests. A book is in the memoir sweet spot when the author's satisfaction of expression is combined with awareness of what their readers want to know.
Mark S. Robinson, author of 2023's First Prize memoir Black on Madison Avenue, includes real-life examples of racism in the world of professional advertising, as well as fascinating episodes from his career. For instance, he publicized the boxing match that became famous when Mike Tyson unexpectedly bit Evander Holyfield's ear.
Meanwhile, in her 2020 Honorable Mention memoir A China Story, Yian Qian gives specific examples of how she and her schoolmates were indoctrinated into the ideology of the Cultural Revolution and devotion to Mao, and also how she came to question the ideology later on. The cover-to-cover interest of both books is due to their excellent judgment of readers' interests and high-quality editing that omits information that's less important to the public.
•
Depth of perspective: Venting
My narrative doesn't acknowledge any ideas contrary to my own. My perspective is the only one that matters.
Depth of perspective: Memoir
I show ideas that contrast with mine and actively engage with them through narration, scene, motifs, and other literary devices.
An important function of some memoirs is to justify an action or policy taken by the author. That can be a really good thing, especially when the memoirist makes the effort to address contrary views.
From Mormon to Mermaid by Lorelei Kay, First Prize in 2022, is a great example. Kay cites news sources and LDS Church documents as she engages with the exact points of Mormon doctrine and practice that motivated her to leave the Church.
In Mind Your Head: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Suicidal Queer Christian Missionary Kid, Honorable Mention in 2016, author Jordan Cosmo describes the evangelical theory and culture in their community of origin as part of their narrative of finding a happy marriage and their true spiritual identity.
•
My character arc: Venting
I, as a character, stay the same. It's others (or the circumstances) who need to change.
My character arc: Memoir
I, as a character, have a distinct plot arc. I chose this particular life episode for my memoir because it shows me changing.
Memoir presents a paradox for readers and writers. As readers, we like to read about characters who change in the face of a challenge. Yet in our real-life challenges, one of our central goals is to be changed as little as possible. Maintaining our sense of self during trauma is something we can rightly be proud of. But if "proud to still be me" translates to "static main character" in the memoir version, readers might not be as pleased!
Writing our own character development is not easy. Changing despite struggling not to is itself a form of trauma, and plunging back into memories of difficult times to analyze how those changes happened is something few of us want to do. That's the task memoirists take on as they trace their own plot arc on the page.
The results can be magnificent. In our 2020 Grand Prize winner, Mine to Carry, we see author Christine Mulvey in different stages of her life: as a very young woman terrified to reveal her pregnancy, as an adult unwillingly separated from her child and moving through stages of grief and anger, and eventually as the older memoirist with the strength and grit to write the memoir, which Ellen called "by far the strongest book I've encountered" as a North Street judge.
On the other hand, the protagonist of a good memoir doesn't have to undergo a complete life transformation in order for their story to be compelling. Alexander and Dale, the gay, middle-aged protagonists of 2019's Honorable Mention River Queens, make a river journey from Texas to Ohio and discover that, as head judge Jendi Reiter put it in their judging feedback, the men's "rugged mechanical skills and courageous journey outweighed their hosts' perplexity at their ‘lifestyle'." The two men go home again much as they were before, while having learned that the rural South is not a monolith in its attitudes towards homosexuality. It takes skill to show precise changes as opposed to general ones, and North Street judges were impressed.
•
Me as a main character: Venting
The book is mainly about events, others' actions, and their effect on me. My role is passive.
Me as a main character: Memoir
The story shows my purposeful actions, why I took them, and what the result was. I solve a specific problem in a way that's unique both to me and to our times. My role is active. I chose this life episode for my memoir because it shows me being active.
In real life, the way forward is not always clear. That's one of the reasons memoirs are so attractive: they're about times when the author took action. Reading a memoir, we, too, can take strength in the author's sense of purpose, resourcefulness, and perseverance.
2024 Honorable Mention Here, Where Death Delights portrays its author, forensic pathologist Dr. Mary Jumbelic, as an active responder to major events like 9/11 and the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. Leslie Sussan's Choosing Life: My Father's Journey in Film from Hollywood to Hiroshima, First Prize in 2021, has two active protagonists: the memoirist's father, a mid-1900s war cinematographer thwarted in his mission to expose the true horror of the US's bombing of Hiroshima, and Leslie herself, continuing his work in the present day to break the silence around the trauma.
•
Prose style: Venting
I don't edit my prose for style. How can readers truly know me unless I'm absolutely straightforward?
Prose style: Memoir
I edit my prose to present the underlying ideas in the most aesthetic and immersive way I can.
Allen Ginsberg's "First thought, best thought" seems to have been misunderstood by some authors as "no editing"...or perhaps the misconception is just too convenient to pass up for those who secretly want to vent. Don't give in to the false temptation of "unalloyed spontaneity"! North Street judges are more interested in books where the author has searched out just the right language for the content. (Ginsberg himself edited assiduously to find the words that best expressed his own "first thoughts".)
2015 First Prize Waking the Bones, by Elizabeth Kirschner, and 2017 Honorable Mention The Sea is Quiet Tonight, by Michael H. Ward, rose to the top of their respective entry pools with language that the final judges called "lyrical and polished" and "gorgeously styled".
•
Handling detail: Venting
Setting, time period, sensory information, and other characters fade into the background as I prioritize my own opinions, feelings, and experiences over everything else.
Handling detail: Memoir
My narrative includes concrete details about setting, time period, sensory information, and other characters. I'm actively trying to make the reader feel involved and immersed through craft, not just plot and characters.
A good memoir is about the author—but for the reader. We recognize a winning author by the great care they put into crafting an immersive experience. The wealth of concrete detail in 2016's First Prize, Red Blood, Yellow Skin, by Linda L.T. Baer, made her childhood in war-torn North Vietnam so real to us that Ellen called it "one of the most compelling books" in the history of the North Street Book Prize at the time. Dennis Reed's Migration Memories (Honorable Mention, 2020) and Linda I. Meyers's The Tell (Grand Prize, 2024) give us similarly vivid experiences of Queens and Manhattan, respectively.
In all three books, time period, sensory detail, and other characters are carefully designed to create a unified, absorbing experience for the reader. We start to suspect that books are "venting" when they don't seem interested in the reader's experience.
•
Conclusion
Personal satisfaction is always important when writing, especially in memoir, our chance to tell our own stories. That said, crossing the line from self-expression to venting can hurt sales and reader opinion. When considering whether part of the purpose of your memoir is venting, a good question to ask might be, "Am I making this content decision for my own sake, or for the reader's?" If the answer is "both" or "the reader's", that might be the mark of a good choice. But if the answer is "my own sake", it could be a sign of venting.
Isamu Noguchi’s “Red”
By Joseph Stanton
A tall rectitude of red travertine,
one of Noguchi's monumental zeros,
full of nothing and nothing if not full,
speaks to his Euro mentor, Brancusi,
yet, also, seems as Zen as Zen could be,
wabi as well as sabi,
a statue that resides in a West that is also East,
Honolulu to be exact,
where Japan and America
cross in more ways than one,
a sculpture offering two sides,
an ancient rune whose tune
also declares the modern,
and we can see, too, that the smooth
is backed by the rough hewn,
balances struck and striking,
primitive, yet sophisticate,
powerful, yet simplistic,
rock that is also flesh,
containing crystals that spark light,
a sun setting on a Pacific expanse—
touching upon his mother and his father
as he often did in mind,
seeking, again,
the balance that is the everything
and the nothing at all.
It Wasn’t Poetry
it wasn't poetry, those years
(summer toothsome as a ripe fruit,
juice dripping down our wrists)
it was trees and shadows
pieces of wind blown in from the sea
boats and waves and bodies
it was the passion moon
yellow as a smoker's tooth,
palms pressed red against the sky
it was voices climbing atop each other
like crazed people in a locked room,
a child's wail pulled from a private place
it was moonlight pooling on the concrete,
long oars of light,
the silver odor of blood
it was sentinels falling, dregs of desperation,
ceasefire seizing the streets,
and the future, lifetimes away,
dreaming us safe
Copyright 2004 by Lisa Suhair Majaj
Critique by Jendi Reiter
This month's critique poem, "It Wasn't Poetry" by Lisa Suhair Majaj, is a haunting evocation of a lost paradise that is sure to resonate with anyone whose beloved homeland has been torn apart by war. The half-glimpsed hope at the poem's end is a scrap of nourishment for us in these violent times.
The first three stanzas seduce the reader into thinking this is going to be a benign pastoral or nostalgic poem. The disruption comes without warning, as disorienting as war's sudden invasion of normal life. We are thrown from a realm of sultry pleasures into a Holocaust-like scene of "voices climbing atop one another/like crazed people in a locked room". This phrase immediately reminded me of the Nazi gas chambers.
Again we shift dizzily back and forth between beauty and horror, as "moonlight pooling on the concrete" turns into blood. By the poem's end, chaos has taken over, and the inhabitants of this landscape cannot tell what the future holds. The "sentinels falling" suggests that the war persists, but on the other hand there is mention of a ceasefire.
"Ceasefire seizing the streets" is a powerful line, growing in intensity with the repetition of "E" and "S" sounds. The unusual word choice "seizing" tells us so much about the people's distance from true peace. The ceasefire is experienced here as paralysis, an uncertain lull rather than a reliable end to the conflict.
Set against this strife, the remembered summer of pleasure seems even more precious than it did at the time. Why does Majaj say, "It wasn't poetry"? Perhaps because it was too fleeting, only a moment separating the fruits of Eden from the autumnal decadence of "the passion moon/yellow as a smoker's tooth". These joys were taken for granted, never subjected to the process of reflection and preservation that produces poetry, and thus they were easily lost.
Alternatively, Majaj may be saying that our ordinary lives are sublime enough to deserve this elegy. Even if the people in the poem didn't produce high culture and poetry, they had something worth saving that the war destroyed.
A third interpretation, in tension with the other two, would be to read "It wasn't poetry" as a warning against idealizing the past. On this reading, the idyll already contained the flaws that would undo it, thoughtless pleasures and harmful overindulgence (the interchangeable "bodies," the stained hands and teeth). I'm less enamored of this negative reading because the first two stanzas feel predominantly life-affirming to me. Still, it is another possible layer of meaning, and one that fits well with the poem's ending.
The last two lines imply that salvation will come, if at all, from looking to the future and not the past. Peace is still only a dream that may be "lifetimes away," but the fragile hope must be preserved along with the memory of the good life that was lost. It wasn't poetry, but turning it into poetry may be a step toward its restoration.
Where could a poem like "It Wasn't Poetry" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
James Wright Poetry Prize
Postmark Deadline: October 1
Sponsored by Mid-American Review; read work by 2004 final judge Michelle Boisseau here
National Poetry Competition
Entries must be received by October 31
Major British prize sponsored by the Poetry Society
New Millennium Writings Awards
Postmark Deadline: November 19
We promote this magazine so often because, well, it deserves it. Recent winning poems have explored war and peace, cross-cultural encounters with suffering and grace.
Poetry Society of America Awards
Postmark Deadline: December 23
Several high-profile contests on various themes, some for members only (we recommend joining); see especially the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award for poems on a humanitarian theme
This poem and critique appeared in the September 2004 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
It Would Rain on that Saturday
By Ken Allan Dronsfield
absent of pearls in a grand ocean mollusk
crying self righteousness without salty tears
seeking to find truth in an unrelenting fervor
see the dark drifting during a twilight crescendo.
dancing in the dark, or waltzing in a whirlwind
depraved and decrepit as a one legged snake
sweet tea from its spot in a cherry wood box
steeped in red clay pots amongst the ingrates.
lightning strikes throughout the lower treeline
disturbing thoughts of ambivalence in dreams
hoods in mourning whilst a crypt-like fog lifts
gates of iron grasp upon the spirit deep within.
rain hits upon leaves making a steady tapping
bare feet hit the road, a slippery slope aghast
a poncho saves the day, in a simple pious way
for we all knew it would rain, on that Saturday.
It’s In the Knowing
By Carolyn Howard-Johnson
I want to know...
how my marrow
ran in their bones. If these Cycladic figures
inspired Picasso, flat-faced; Miro,
expressionless. But Quakers
who stitched sunbonnet girls
on quilts knew Keros not at all,
nor farmers and fishers,
nor those who pillaged their ancient
shards. Mayans pulled faceless dolls
from husks of corn, never knew this one,
broken arm, vagina visible
between its open legs, harp in its lap. Still
its music melts over five millenniums
to touch me,
allow me to put
my face on its.
It’s Not About Sharks
"Let me tell you about heartache and the loss of God."
—Jim Morrison
It's about sharks and how there was no warning,
No lifeguard's whistle,
No dorsal fin sailing horizontal to the beach,
No time to decide between flight or fight,
Only sink or swim.
It's about trust and finally feeling safe enough
To lay back and float on the waves,
Eyes closed under the sun's watchful gaze,
Arms extended outward like an aquatic crucifixion.
It's about pain, fear and the heart-stopping shock
Of being dragged down, pulled under,
Where no one can see you struggle or hear your screams.
Your mouth fills with water with each "why?" and "what?"
To a force you cannot yet see.
It's about sharks and what they take from you,
The loss of faith as you remember
The moment before, how sure you were
That the warmth on your face was the smile of God
And the breeze his breath on your skin.
It's about isolation and struggling to survive.
It's the blank gray face, the cold dead eyes
That leave you, bleeding out,
To fight the pain, the undertow and the shock;
To live, if you dare.
It's about sharks and what they leave you with:
A fear of a place you once loved,
Phantom pains that haunt you years later,
An artificial limb that will never feel like your own,
Prosthetic toes that cannot wiggle in the sand.
It's about sadness, madness and the loss of God.
It's about things that can never be retrieved
Even if the fishy guts were split open.
It's about my life and all that was taken from me
On these shores.
And no, it's not really about sharks at all.
Copyright 2008 by Renee Palmer
Critique by Jendi Reiter
Renee Palmer's "It's Not About Sharks" uses her literal subject, a shark attack, as a metaphor for another trauma that is never defined. This indirection gives the poem its universal resonance.
Experiences too terrible to be spoken about find expression in dream symbolism, sensory memories stripped of context, or sublimation into a work of art. This last strategy contains the emotions within a less charged set of facts so they can be viewed apart from the wounded self. Trauma overwhelms our consciousness, cutting off awareness of past and future, and with them the hope of experiencing anything other than the painful feelings of the moment. The healing process can start with the mere act of expanding one's field of vision to include a storyline other than the autobiographical.
Because indirection and metaphor are well-known ways of talking about trauma, the tension between Palmer's title "It's Not About Sharks" and her refusal to talk about anything but sharks convinces the reader that the unnamed event was real and significant. It also leaves a space open for the reader to identify the "shark attack" with an experience in her own life.
This type of opening is one of the main reasons we need poetry. The literal surface of events can distract us from their inner truth. "This is a piece about rape," we might say, or "a piece about losing a beloved parent," and be deceived that we have understood the thing described, that we have exhausted its meaning and can move on. This is especially true if the subject is familiar from other literary or news treatments.
Instead of selecting such an overdetermined narrative, Palmer bypasses explanation and submerges us in the sensations of a scene that cannot help but make our hearts race: the too-placid day, the caressing waters, the benevolent gaze of the sun. We know from the movies that someone is in for a bad shock. Somehow, that predictability doesn't deprive the set-up of its power to lure us in. If anything, it affects us all the more, because we all go around with some half-suppressed fear that any tranquility we've secured in our lives is vulnerable to disruption at a moment's notice.
Palmer's style is straightforward, without a lot of technical complexity, but always seasoned with strong images that maintain the poetic tone. Among the strongest lines were the "aquatic crucifixion" and "the blank gray face, the cold dead eyes/That leave you, bleeding out". In the latter sentence, we confront the alien ruthlessness of the shark, who has transmitted its deathly pallor to the victim "bleeding out", so that her appearance is now defined by the attack. The replacement of her real leg with a prosthetic continues this negative transformation, an alienation from the self, in the same way that the trauma retrospectively leaches the warmth from memories of the place she once loved.
If Palmer was looking to condense this poem, she might consider taking out a couple of lines that verge on over-explaining. They're not jarring, but neither are they strictly necessary. Some candidates are "It's about isolation and struggling to survive" and "An artificial limb that will never feel like your own".
"It's Not About Sharks" is a vivid poem that will resonate with many people's experience. Because of its simple narrative style and direct emotional appeal, a poem like this would probably fare better if submitted to general-audience magazines and contests run by local poetry societies, rather than the university-affiliated journals.
Where could a poem like "It's Not About Sharks" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Arc Poem of the Year Contest
Postmark Deadline: June 30
Arc: Canada's National Poetry Magazine offers top prize of C$1,500 for unpublished poems; online payment accepted
Kentucky State Poetry Society Contests
Postmark Deadline: June 30
KSPS offers $200 for unpublished poems up to 32 lines, any theme or style, in "Grand Prix" category; 24 other categories (various themes/styles) offer top prizes of $15-$100
Writers Bureau Poetry & Short Story Contest
Entries must be received by June 30
British online writing school offers 1,000 pounds in each genre; online entries allowed
League of Minnesota Poets Annual Contest
Postmark Deadline: July 31
Local poetry society offers $125 in Grand Prize category, 17 other themed awards with top prizes of $20-$70
Poetry Society of Texas Annual Contests
Entries must be received by August 15
PST offers Grand Prize of $450 in open-theme category plus 99 themed awards (some members-only) with prizes of $25-$400; no simultaneous submissions
This poem and critique appeared in the June 2008 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
It’s War, Fadwa Says
By J.C. Todd
A cousin moved to Baghdad
from Tehran
gone
her children
gone
or all of them
missing
which may not mean
gone
but just
beyond reach
which may mean
alive.
Or not.
It's war,
Fadwa says,
and there's no fog
in her
sorrow
and clarity.
Ten years,
she says,
no word.
Wishing no one
dead
even if they are.
[Reprinted by permission of Able Muse Press]
J Journal: New Writing on Justice
This literary journal, launched in 2008, is published by a well-regarded college in the CUNY system. Contributors have included Paul Mariani, Erika Dreifus, Randall Brown, Paul Hostovsky and Kathryn Howd Machan.
James Merrill House
The James Merrill House offers workshops for adults and youth, lectures, and a writer-in-residence program.
Jane Friedman’s “MBA for Writers” Lectures
Digital publishing expert and former Writers' Digest executive Jane Friedman's blog contains a wealth of resources for professional writers. Her 6-part "MBA for Writers" online lecture series covers the principles for success in today's rapidly changing industry. You can purchase access to the whole series or individual sessions.
Jane Friedman’s Guide to Getting the Most Out of a Writing Conference
Publishing expert Jane Friedman has been speaking at writers' conferences since 2001. In this article from her blog, she gives tips on how to select the best conference for your goals, being a well-prepared speaker, making the most of networking opportunities, and more.
Jane Friedman’s Self-Publishing Links
Digital publishing expert Jane Friedman compiled this extensive list of resources about how to publish an e-book, find the right e-publishing services, and stay on top of changes in the industry.
Jane Friedman’s Self-Publishing Tutorial
This 2017 blog post from publishing expert Jane Friedman walks you through the steps of self-publishing a book. Video tutorial included.
Jane Friedman’s Writing Advice Links
Publishing industry expert Jane Friedman's blog offers a wealth of information on marketing your creative work. This page collects links to her most important articles about writing, publishing, and promoting your book. Topics include getting started on social media, fact versus fiction in memoirs, the pros and cons of creative writing groups, finding an agent, and much more.
Jay Wurts, Writer and Editor
Editor Jay Wurts offers a range of services to indie authors, including developmental editing, ghostwriting, and coaching on how to make your book project more marketable to agents and publishers. He has experience helping culturally diverse and ESL authors package their work for a mainstream audience. He also works with publishers as a freelance editor or ghostwriter.
Jealous
By Laurie Klein
Morning, with your pillowed hands
twisting over the bed, do you envy
human desire, its midnight hinge,
covet our slack-jawed alpha waves
morphing to REM and then
a prance of neurons, an in-burst
of the invisible? All those covert
sleep spindles slowing the heart,
cooling the body—yes, we are
lapped 'round with rest: one delta
astride a deepening river, one dream
richer than silt.
Poor Great Ante Meridiem!
Another graveyard shift, the looping,
half-world commute—no wonder
you snap the shade on its roller,
muttering, headboard to folded quilt,
that this life-size space we share is our first
and final host;
you rise alone.
And we bend, drawing the linens smooth,
makers of beds moving in tandem
toward that omega breath, unfazed,
plumped and glowing,
skins fragrant as June, tattooed
with our storied nights—oh, to be taken in
again and again and then, limp, fading,
folded away: two prayer flags, unpegged.
Jeff Goins, Writer
This literary blog features profound reflections on creativity and spirituality, along with more practical advice about good writing habits and marketing your work.
Jendi Reiter
Editor of Winning Writers and author of the poetry books Barbie at 50, Swallow, and A Talent for Sadness. Follow her on Twitter (@JendiReiter) for poetry videos, upcoming readings, blog posts, new book releases, and articles of interest to writers.
Jerusalem Slim
By Michael Topa
I did not know it was Joy
And her fingers
Blessing me from words
Trapped in stone
Now in Gethsemane
You who could not wait
One hour sleep like salt
Scattered on the ground
But even now I forget
Where the difference falls
Some say Elijah
Some say John
But Joy you say nothing
And take me on
*This is what my father called Christ, alone
and muttering to himself, while nursing his
Four Roses whiskey at the kitchen table.
Originally published in America: The Jesuit Review, June 26, 2017, as one of three runners-up for the Foley Poetry Prize
Jessica Hische
Jessica Hische is a successful graphic designer specializing in lettering (typefaces), as well as the author and illustrator of the bestselling children's book Tomorrow I'll Be Brave. Check out her website to get cover-design inspiration, purchase fonts for your book, or hire her for a design project.
Jewel Beth Davis
Jewel Beth Davis is a writer and theater artist who has performed, directed, and choreographed professionally throughout the US and UK. She teaches writing and theater at NHTI-Concord Community College. Visit her website to read her stories and essays, which have appeared in such journals as Compass Rose, Lilith, and Diverse Voices Quarterly. She writes about Judaism, family life, humor, the theater world, and much more.
Jewish Review of Books
Launched in 2010, this print and online journal features critical essays about religion, literature, culture, and politics, as well as fiction, poetry, and the arts.
Jewish Storyteller Press
Founded in 2007 by filmmaker and author Scott Hilton Davis, Jewish Storyteller Press is an independent small press that uses print‑on‑demand and e‑book technology to bring English translations of 19th-century Yiddish writers to 21st-century readers. They publish new translations, adaptations, and original stories based on the works of once-famous Yiddish writers such as Sholem Abramovitsh (Mendele Moykher Sforim), Jacob Dinezon, I.L. Peretz, and Sholem Aleichem.
Jim Landwehr
Jim Landwehr is the author of Dirty Shirt: A Boundary Waters Memoir (eLectio Publishing, 2014) and Written Life: A Poetry Collection (eLectio, 2015). His poetry and essays have been published in MidWest Outdoors, The Tattooed Poets Project, Parody Poetry Journal, Torrid Literature, Wisconsin People and Ideas, and numerous other journals and anthologies.
JJ Peña
JJ Peña (he/they) has won prizes for flash fiction from Blue Earth Review, Cutbank, and Mythic Picnic, and serves as a flash fiction reader for Split Lip Magazine.
John Amen: “Walking Unsure of Myself: Election Day, 2004”
Hallucinatory meditation on the political culture of wartime America, by John Amen, editor of the bimonthly journal The Pedestal Magazine.
John Clare Literary Festival
The John Clare Cottage Trust now hosts an annual literary festival each fall in his onetime home in the village of Helpston. Events include the Bard of the Fens Competition, a storytelling and performance poetry contest for authors who live or work within an hour's distance of the Fens region.
Journal of the Month
Journal of the Month is a curated subscription service that sends a different literary journal each time, giving subscribers an overview of the contemporary creative writing market. "Decide how often you want to receive magazines—every month, every other month, or once every three months—and during that period of time, you will receive a brand new literary magazine by the 10th of the month. Exactly which literary magazine you'll get is a tantalizing surprise that changes every month. And you'll never receive the same literary magazine twice." Participating journals include Creative Nonfiction, Ecotone, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, December, and many more.
jubilat
Based at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the literary journal jubilat aims to publish not only the best in contemporary American poetry, but to place it alongside a varied selection of reprints, found pieces, lyric prose, art, and interviews with poets and other artists.
Jubilate Agno
Like a black kite
from another dimension,
God appears
circling above
the dying lamb—
unhurried hunger
weaving through
an ordinary sky—
His poisoned eyes
reflecting the knowledge
that his flesh
will become
His flesh,
his blood
His blood.
Sweeping down
in an ever decreasing
vortex,
black wings
shrouding the sun,
He steps down
from His throne of air.
Carrion eater,
tearer of flesh,
purifier,
His terrible
skull red
from holding
back the sun—
shit-stained
legs and feet
clawing the earth
in time's shadow,
patient, waiting,
His skeletal breath
stinks of centuries
of rotting meat.
After an exploratory
peck or two
He grunts, hisses,
then starts with the eyes,
as He promises
Paradise.
Copyright 2011 by Jack Goodman
Critique by Jendi Reiter
There's something about Christianity and gothic horror that seems to go together, as we see in "Jubilate Agno" by Jack Goodman, a poet from Twin Falls, Idaho. Many of our classic fright-fest plots could be seen as variations on Christian imagery, but with God's goodness and trustworthiness removed from the picture. Compare "Rosemary's Baby" to the Virgin Birth, or zombies to the Resurrection. After seeing the "Twilight" vampire movies, I had a hard time not hearing Edward Cullen's seductive voice in this hymn we often sing during the Eucharist at my church:
The Bread that I will give
is my Flesh for the life of the world,
and they who eat of this bread,
they shall live for ever,
they shall live for ever.
Unless you eat
of the Flesh of the Son of Man
and drink of his Blood,
you shall not have life within you,
you shall not have life within you.
What are we to make of these parallels? One could object that artists in this genre are merely appropriating sacred images for the shock value of seeing them profaned. Such was some conservative Christians' objection to the scene of ants crawling on a crucifix in AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz' short film "A Fire in My Belly", which led to the film's being removed from a Smithsonian exhibit. Yet a brief tour through medieval art shows that blood, death, torture, and the grotesque have been part of the Christian story from the beginning. Part of the tradition's power lies in how it faces these realities of the human condition and promises ultimate redemption from them.
That hope, however, is not always as evident to our senses as the suffering, and so the latter threatens to dominate our imaginations, stifling faith. The horror genre voices our fear that unredeemed suffering is the only reality, or that we will have to save ourselves from it via brute force or magical talismans. In this respect, its spirituality can sometimes be more genuine than the G-rated kitsch that's often sold under the label of Christian art.
Given the long history of "the blood of the Lamb" in devotional art and its darker counterpart, horror, how is a poet to approach this theme in a fresh way? Goodman has made several choices that help him out. First, he sticks to describing the action in concrete terms instead of editorializing. He does not need to talk about loss of faith, or the terror of the victim. We feel these directly as we are caught up in the graphic scene. Second, the form of the poem works against any impulse to be florid and wordy, which seems to be a particular temptation for writers of gothic horror because of that genre's roots in the Victorian era. Short lines and simple words keep the action moving and build suspense.
At key points in the poem, Goodman pairs visually arresting images with a sound pattern that is strong and well-paced. The opening K-sounds in "Like a black kite" resemble the harsh caws of crows, while the words themselves instantly create a menacing atmostphere. The stately yet inexorable approach of the bird of prey is heard in the measured rhythms of "black wings/shrouding the sun,/He steps down/from His throne of air." The last phrase carries a subtle allusion to the devil, one of whose traditional epithets is "the Prince of the Air".
Another fine passage is "His terrible/skull red/from holding/back the sun". Regular readers will know I'm critical of over-using line breaks to manufacture drama. Here, though, the technique works perfectly because nearly every word is a strong one and essential to the phrase: terrible, skull, red, holding, back, sun. I can hear the strain of that holding-back. The almost sublime image is then followed by "shit-stained/legs and feet" just to crush any fleeting thought that this deity might be worthy of worship after all.
I would suggest reworking or cutting the second line, "from another dimension", a cliché that's been used to promote too many sci-fi B-movies. I don't know if the poem really needs "Carrion eater" in the second stanza, either. "Carrion" is close to becoming an archaic word that only shows up in gothic horror tales, and could be seen as overwrought. Also consider ending that stanza at "stinks of centuries", which still conveys the notion of decay without the obvious image of rotting meat.
The poem concludes with sibilant menace in the S-sounds of hisses, starts, eyes, promises, Paradise. It's a nice twist to end with a suggestion of the Lamb's masochistic pleasure, since the eroticism of submission is another sublimated strain in Christian imagery that the horror genre brings forward with a vengeance. Believing in God's power but not His love, some opt for the tragic beauty of knowingly trusting the untrustworthy, hoping thereby to manufacture their own transcendence. Jubilate agno—rejoice in the Lamb. Indeed.
Where could a poem like "Jubilate Agno" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Flatmancrooked Poetry Prize
Entries must be received by March 1
Sacramento-based small press offers $500 prize, plus anthology publication for top 30 entries, for poems up to 500 words; enter online
Poetry 2011 International Poetry Competition (Atlanta Review)
Postmark Deadline: March 1
This well-regarded journal offers $1,000 top prize, plus publication for top 20 entries; enter by mail or online
Balticon SF Poetry Contest
Postmark Deadline: April 1
The Baltimore Science Fiction Society offers $100 top prize for poems with science fiction, fantasy or horror themes; winners invited to read at Balticon, their annual convention, in May; previously published work accepted
This poem and critique appeared in the February 2011 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Judith Goldhaber
Her collection Sonnets from Aesop, a retelling of 100 fables in verse (beautifully illustrated by Gerson Goldhaber), is available from Ribbonweed Press.
Juneteenth Book Fest
From writers, to artists, to industry pros, the goal is to shine a light on the width and breadth of Black American literature, to strengthen the connection to the communities we write for, and to honor the legacy of Black American storytelling. The inaugural 2020 festival took place online because of the COVID-19 epidemic, but the organizers hope to plan in-person events in future years.
just femme & dandy
Launched in 2021, just femme & dandy is a biannual literature and arts journal created for and by queers on the topic of fashion. See their website for each issue's themed submission call. Editors say, "just femme & dandy embraces all the layers of hybridity that push against the tensions that pressure us to conform. Nothing is off limits. To get an idea of what we accept, think of the following, and beyond: poetry, fiction, nonfiction, comics, illustration, drag, dance, video, film, photography, tutorials, interviews, reviews, listicles, thinkpieces, commentaries, historical investigations, and so on."
Just Publishing Advice
Derek Haines, a speculative fiction and thriller writer, maintains this useful blog with advice for self-published authors, with detailed and timely articles about such topics as using social media to sell books.
Kaleidoscope Magazine
They accept poetry, fiction, essays, interviews and book reviews. Submission deadlines are March 1 and August 1 annually. The editors say: "Unique to the field of disability studies, this award-winning publication expresses the experiences of disability from the perspective of individuals, families, healthcare professionals, and society as a whole. The material chosen for Kaleidoscope challenges and overcomes stereotypical, patronizing, and sentimental attitudes about disability. Although content always focuses on a particular aspect of disability, writers with and without disabilities are welcome to submit their work."
Kansas
I'm being dropped. I took a turn pulling the head of our long line of humming wheels and bobbing legs traversing the empty landscape, and now I've rotated to the back, following behind my neighbor and longtime riding partner. Marc is still getting stronger, but age and injury have started to exact their toll on me.
The peloton is a loosely coupled train. Gaps develop and widen as the pace quickens, and I find myself slipping off Marc's tire. I try to sprint back, but there's no starch left. He spins up to another rider in front. Gradually the riders in front grow smaller in the distance and finally disappear. I am churning along with my aching quads under the blue dome of the sky, pulling only myself, being pulled by no one. Suddenly I am no longer in Vermont, but in a place I've been blown back to all my life. I am in Kansas.
I was a child in Leavenworth, in a large brick house beside the Penitentiary. A guard tower stood in our yard, and behind the house the wheat began. I watched squirrels chase each other through the tops of the tall elms. I stood on a wall and directed the black storm clouds in their advance. I built a paper zoo, with paper cages for paper lions. I waited each summer day for my father to come home from the prison in his suit and tie, newspaper folded under his arm. I walked to school across the wide reservation and through the leafy neighborhoods alone.
Father bought me a red Schwinn a few days before my ninth birthday, and taught me to ride it, running along beside as I wobbled. On my birthday, while I was at school, he pulled away, borne beyond the horizon on a swift coronary. His last words were "What a beautiful day!" My mother packed our things in cardboard barrels and we left Kansas. I later marveled at how few memories I carried, as if I hadn't been paying attention.
Still doggedly pedaling on today's empty road, I spare a look around. The flat fields of Addison are pleasant on this beautiful day, but the winds in Kansas rippled the wheat fields like waves of a golden ocean. I made friends with myself while watching them. I learned to enjoy my thoughts. Today I feel the winds of age blowing against me, a privilege my father never had. I try to imagine my young self riding out of my childhood not fatally damaged or condemned by circumstance, but just another odd variation of the human species. It's time to rewrite myself.
Marc is lying on a church lawn. I thank him for waiting, and he says that he wasn't sorry to let the group hurtle on without him. We resume a brisk pace of our own. I'm grateful for his friendship. I'm happy to be riding right now, right here, with a mind and body that could be worse. I'm grateful even for Kansas.
Copyright 2010 by Ken Martin
Critique by Tracy Koretsky
Free writes, automatic writing, journaling, the Amherst Writers & Artists method—what we have here are a lot of expressions that, when applied to the composition of poetry, all amount to same thing: much poetry begins with prose. This makes sense. We think in prose. We are natural with it. Streaming our consciousness through a pen can, indeed, help us discover and explore our material with an ease that may elude us when faced with the more formal concerns of constructing a poem.
But then what? How do we locate and shape a poem from the raw material we have produced? This month, Critique Corner is indebted to Ken Martin of Vermont for allowing us to use his flash memoir "Kansas" as an object lesson. Though far more polished than a typical sample of, say, automatic writing, this 500-word personal essay does provide clues that may help us lift the poems from our prose.
To begin, let's recall a few notions discussed in last month's Critique Corner, which addressed some of the differences between story and poem. Poems, I wrote then, "verse", which is to say, turn away from themselves, sometimes returning, sometimes not. Obviously, "Kansas" does this. The first two paragraphs establish a frame to which Martin returns in his final paragraph.
What makes this set-up and return an essay device, as opposed to a poetic one, is that the first paragraph clearly establishes a theme (aging) and the final paragraph provides an epiphany relating to that theme (the gratitude he feels for his vigor, his friendship, even his awareness that he is grateful). A poem is usually not quite so tidy. We do not neatly sum the turns we take in our poems. Rather we leave the reader to make of them what he or she will, inviting participation. While this is a large part of what makes reading a poem enjoyable, the conclusive nature of essay is what makes it satisfying. Every form of writing has its merits and uses.
Remove that frame, however, and what remains reads very much like a poem. Recall once again last month's essay, in which I stated that one way poems unify is through sound devices, and one way to create a sound device in a narrative poem is to create parallel grammatical structures. Now look at the third paragraph of "Kansas". Beginning with the third sentence, every sentence has the same construction. It begins with "I" then uses a simple past-tense verb. In the first two sentences, the nouns in the second half of the sentence are modified with adjectives. In the next sentence, all the nouns are modified with the same adjective, "paper". Language need not be ornate or grand to be musical; rather, it requires pattern. See for yourself how these two plain but effective repeated structures organize the remaining sentences of the paragraph.
Often, when using prose as a pre-writing technique, we fall into this type of repetition. Noticing it will help pull the poem out from the prose. Reinforcing it or building it in revision can help give the material shape. Be sure to vary the pattern as you work to keep the ear surprised.
Paragraph four has a graceful balance between specificity and abstraction, furthering its resemblance to poetry. In the first sentence we are given a color, a brand name and a number. In the second, the phrase "pulled away" comes, in context, to have a double meaning. It refers to the previous information. But then, without further ado, Martin pivots the phrase to apply to what follows, the abstract "borne beyond the horizon", then quickly returns to more concrete diction with "swift coronary". Though subtle, this shift of tone is enough to underscore the heightened importance of the event. There is no need for explanation or italics.
The sharper turn, however, takes place in the final sentence of that paragraph. Staying true to the timbre of the piece, Martin uses no artifice to move from the memory to his present-day reflection upon it. With this, he progresses from the specifically personal to the universal, that is, from his childhood in Kansas to the way all adults feel at some time about their own childhoods. This would make a fine ending to the poem.
But then, so would "It's time to rewrite myself" which concludes the following paragraph. Is that material also part of the piece? Taste and author's intent would ultimately govern that decision, meaning some close analysis will be useful to inform the decision.
The first sentence of paragraph five is really there to tie back to its frame. By simply removing the word "still", the poem would continue along the new path the previous paragraph laid for it. So, it could "work" but what would it add? Well, it adds what the larger frame gave the essay: a springboard to the memory.
Next, there is a comparison between the present and the past. This might be a worthwhile contrast for the poem, though the simile of wheat fields to ocean waves is not nearly as original as the paper zoo. Anthropomorphizing the fields (making friends with them), on the other hand, is considerably fresher.
The deeper question, however, rests with the final three sentences of paragraph five. The choice ultimately is: does the author want this to be a poem about the nature of childhood memory, or about living past the age at which one's parent dies?
This is a decision that only the poet can make. The more relevant point to our consideration today is what to do with the raw prose material. I submit that paragraph five could be divided in two. The first half might begin the poem, establishing a frame and context. The material starting with "Today" might end the poem.
I point this out not because I think it's the best choice, but only because I want to demonstrate how malleable the prose pre-writing can be. Just because the thoughts occur to us in a specific order, or because we conceive of them originally as being part of the same paragraph, does not mean that they should remain that way as we redraft. One practical technique for re-opening prose for reshaping into poem is to separate every sentence from its predecessor—cut them apart, if need be—and then experiment with new arrangements.
Of course the poem is not finished. It will require a title—which the raw material seems almost magically always to offer—and a form—stanzification, line breaks, etc. Surely these topics merit their own discussions. (You will find a few tips on breaking lines in June's Critique Corner.) My point today is that before all that, the poem requires something more basic: it requires recognition. If you find yourself just breaking your prose pre-writing into lines, then you will have prose broken into lines, not a poem. So look for pattern and repetition, look for turns and shifts of tone or subject or audience, and perhaps before any of that, look for what will be your final line. You're on your way.
Where could an essay like "Kansas" be submitted? The following contest may be of interest:
Writers' Workshop Annual Memoirs Contest
Postmark Deadline: December 30
The Writers' Workshop of Asheville, NC offers $300 for personal essays up to 4,000 words; fee includes critique
In addition, this upcoming contest may be a good fit for narrative poetry based on personal experience
Founders Award
Postmark Deadline: October 15
The Georgia Poetry Society offers $75 and anthology publication for poems up to 80 lines on any subject; no simultaneous submissions
This essay and critique appeared in the September 2010 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Karen J. Weyant
Ms. Weyant's chapbook Wearing Heels in the Rust Belt was a contest winner from Main Street Rag.
Kari (my best friend)
Some monster lay deep in the water that day.
It put its fingers to our mouths when it drifted
towards what was left of Kari's lungs.
Our eyes had never heard death, never tasted
that moment when what makes us whole,
separates.
I remember Kari, afraid of monsters,
willing herself to jump from the highest cliff
in the pits of the old quarry.
It was just that kissing game, truth or dare.
The water was deep and black, cold.
The monster cut through her with pure mean
that thickened the day into ice.
I stirred myself into a cocktail of warm.
After all, we were making snow angels in the air.
We were just teasing her a little.
It was all just fun.
Dangling arms and pretentious fingers
waited for childhood to choke as her weight
slammed the rocks and her flesh sliced
down to the water in long strips
making wet slurping sounds.
She jumped too soon.
That summer the pits had no bottom
but open earth sores watered up
to keep Kari's hands spilling over limestone.
A blood angel fades here kids
aren’t allowed to swim anymore.
Copyright 2007 by Kim Mayhall
Critique by Jendi Reiter
Kim Mayhall's poem "Kari" intersperses the awful physical sensations of a girl's death with metaphorical and fantastical images in order to capture the onlooking children's shock when their game collides with a deadly reality. Perhaps any poem about death is as much about the feelings of those left behind as it is about the person memorialized. Here, despite the title "Kari", the primary focus is the impact on her playmates.
Kari, about whom we know nothing except her fear of monsters and her closeness to the narrator, is not an individual so much as a representative of the children's own mortality, which they confront for the first time through her. She becomes a sacrificial symbol, a "blood angel" reminding them of their guilt. They feel responsible for goading her to take the fatal dive, of course, but the guilt is also something more primal that is bound up with their new consciousness of death. The immunity of youth fails in both directions. How much harm even a child can suffer is also a measure of how much harm a child can inflict on others.
Mayhall engages all of the reader's senses from the beginning, a technique that gives this poem much of its power. Fingers to mouths, eyes that hear, a moment so affecting to body and mind that it can actually be tasted. What to make of the synesthesia "Our eyes had never heard death"? The clue may lie in the contrast between wholeness and separation in the next lines. That earliest childhood state, when the self is undifferentiated from the world, and sensations flow in without being consciously recognized as "sight" versus "hearing", is like the unity among the children before Kari steps into the spotlight. Her death names and individuates her. The others are simply "we". (There is a first-person singular narrator in some lines, but she speaks for their collective experience, not revealing any special interaction with Kari.)
The children at first displace the guilt of the accident onto the "monster" that "put its fingers to our mouths" and "cut through her with pure mean". But Kari, though "afraid of monsters", jumped because she was even more afraid of losing face before her peers ("that kissing game, truth or dare"; "We were just teasing her a little"). Who then are the true monsters? They plead innocence ("we were making snow angels in the air") but the next stanza refers back to this gesture in a more candid, less flattering way: "Dangling arms and pretentious fingers/waited for childhood to choke". The end of childhood means that one can no longer blame imaginary forces outside one's control.
The physical realism of the penultimate stanza is almost unbearable, as perhaps it should be, but the lyrical yet horrifying opening of the final stanza takes an already memorable poem to a new level. Again outside the realm of realism, we are in a ghost story where the earth itself will not let the dead rest, but this time the haunting cannot be dismissed as a child's fear of the dark. Everything we fear is already within ourselves.
The grammar of the last two lines is irregular, a stylistic choice that does not show up elsewhere in the poem, which makes me think Mayhall may have meant "A blood angel fades where kids/aren't allowed to swim anymore". However, I like the cadence of "A blood angel fades here" and I feel that two shorter declarative sentences ("A blood angel fades here; kids/aren't allowed to swim anymore") has a stronger rhythmic impact than the longer single sentence. Also, the overstatement of "kids aren't allowed to swim anymore" (ever? anywhere?) conveys the totality of their expulsion from Eden. More has been lost than access to a specific watering hole. What this line tells me is, kids aren't exempt from human nature, and sometimes they discover that in the most painful ways.
Where could a poem like "Kari" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Oregon State Poetry Association Contests
Postmark Deadline: August 31
Twice-yearly contest offers prizes up to $100 in categories including traditional verse, humor, open theme
Robert Frost Poetry Award
Postmark Deadline: September 15
Competitive award for poems "in the spirit of Robert Frost" includes $1,000 and featured reading at festival in Lawrence, MA
Lucidity Poetry Journal Awards
Postmark Deadline: October 31
Free contest offers prizes up to $100 (doubled this year) for clear, understandable poems in any form dealing with people and interpersonal relationships
This poem and critique appeared in the August 2007 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Karla K. Morton
This Texas-based poet's book/CD combo, 'Wee Cowrin' Timorous Beastie', is a 17th-century Scottish epic story, written in rhyme, and set to an original musical score by the Juno award-winning Canadian composer Howard Baer. Morton's creative multimedia project brings the old world of European epic poetry together with a modern cinematic score.
