Resources
From Category:
Museum of Bad Art
Located in a theatre basement in Massachusetts, the Museum of Bad Art is the world's only museum dedicated to the collection, preservation, exhibition and celebration of bad art in all its forms. Why study bad art? Because art that is sincerely meant, yet unintentionally awful, can teach us what pitfalls to avoid in our own work. It can also be very funny, and (to quote the literary journal Ploughshares) "convey a distinctive and strange vision" that lifts it above banal badness. Better to fail ambitiously than succeed and be boring.
My Dim Aviary
By Gillian Cummings. This collection of sensual prose-poems is an imagined autobiography of the model Fernande, the subject of French photographer Jean Agélou's erotic postcards in the early 20th century. Slipping gracefully between English and French, her wordplay is as elusive as a woman desired by all, understood by none.
My Favorite Apocalypse
The enticing title says it all: this author embraces all the joys and sorrows of the body, flamboyant as a rock musician yet wryly wise as a philosopher. Unusual juxtapositions abound, but her words always discover that they enjoy each other's company.
My First Book of Haiku Poems
Translated by Esperanza Ramirez-Christensen, illustrated by Tracy Gallup. This artistically designed, bilingual picture book features 20 poems by Japanese haiku masters such as Issa and Basho. Each poem has breathing room in its own two-page spread featuring the original Japanese verse (in script and Romaji), Ramirez-Christensen's translation, a dreamy painting reminiscent of Magritte's surreal images, and a prompt for imaginative reflection on the pairing of art and text.
My God Is This a Man
By Laura Sims. The author's third collection from Fence Books is a haunting collage of fragments from writing by and about serial killers, juxtaposed with lyric passages and stark abstract visual elements such as square frames and all-black pages. There are no gruesome details here. Sims is interested in the philosophy of self-expression through crime, an exploration that is no less chilling for being primarily cerebral. The mind-field we enter in this book is fragmented, grandiose, and claustrophobic.
My Machberet
This blog by Erika Dreifus, who also runs the writers' resource site The Practicing Writer, focuses on Jewish literary news and commentary. Machberet is the Hebrew word for notebook.
My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales
Dark, innovative, beautiful, strange variations on classic fairy tales from around the world. Some stories remain within the fantasy-horror genre, while others reenact the fairy tale's psychological themes in a contemporary realist setting. Each story is followed by the author's reflections on the source material and how it inspired them. Notable contributors include playwright Neil LaBute, poets Joyelle McSweeney, Kim Addonizio, and Sabrina Orah Mark, and fiction writers Michael Cunningham and Gregory Maguire. This book is not appropriate for normal children.
Mystery Writers Forum
This free online forum for mystery writers includes boards for writing advice, the publishing business (agents, conferences, and trends), and crowdsourced research about how crimes are committed and solved. Wondering about courtroom procedure, legal ethics, or how various weapons and poisons work? Ask the forum.
Mythcreants
Mythcreants is a comprehensive and lively collection of blog posts and podcast episodes with craft advice for fantasy and sci-fi storytelling. Topics range from worldbuilding and story structure to avoidance of oppressive tropes.
Mythogyny: The Lives and Times of Women Elders in B.C.
This anthology of oral histories by senior citizens in British Columbia, Canada, paints a collective portrait of resourceful working-class women who survived poverty, sexism, and the failure of their illusions about marriage and family security.
Naked (for the women of Salem)
By Jennifer L. Gauthier
Naked lately—
flayed over fire
innards exposed indisposed
to tell my secrets
to those who wait.
Called to testify amplify verify the very part
that hides itself away inside.
Bartholomew knew the fate that
I can't escape
To skin the truth off the lies to try
To skim the oil from the water
As it slews in circles across the surface.
Roiling, my brain buzzes with bitter words
Biting back the worst when they threaten to slip through the slit
That gapes in my face.
Naked later—
Stuffed with stones sinking
Into the dank underbelly of the stream
screaming through the current wetly
with a witch's wail.
naked arms
By The Poet Spiel
they may be hungry
but they are not cold
they learned first
not to be cold
not to wear a coat
because there was no coat
you see them at grunt work
on hiways on rooftops on farms
you see them pushing snow pushing manure
no coat
like they are not cold
tho you are freezing
everyone is freezing
the old ones survived
the border crossing
determined to tolerate
anything for a penny
just for this opportunity
they could not afford to be cold
their kids' kids' kids still crawl out
from beneath old truckbeds
or plywood lean-tos down at the tracks
to walk to school to learn english
with their faces scrubbed
but without coats
with naked arms
you want to say:
are you hungry
are you cold
tho you know they are not cold
if you gave them your coat
they would not wear it
they do not wear coats
bulk beans or rice suffice
but they are not cold
Nameless Boy
By Douglas Goetsch (now Diana Goetsch). Like a Garrison Keillor monologue at the end of an evening, humorous riffs and tender anecdotes prove only partially effective at warding off a deep melancholy in this poet's third full-length collection. You can laugh at light verse such as "Pee on Your Foot", and a few pages later, be slain by the self-lacerating loneliness of "Forgiveness Poem". Sometimes the shift stuns you with surprise in the same poem, as when a tongue-in-cheek tribute to 1989's morning radio mix ends with the questioning of a worker's hopeless endurance, reminiscent of Philip Levine. In their unpretentious way, these narratives hope to heal the deepest wound of ordinary life: that of never really knowing the people close to us, or being known. Both this theme and the title seem to take on an additional significance from Goetsch's post-publication gender transition. The book closes with a delightful, multi-part fantasy about names and whether they determine our destiny, the poem itself a gift for a boy who is named at the end.
NameProtect’s Free Online Trademark Search
Thinking of starting a new publication or service? Try out various names with NameProtect's free online trademark search. Avoid wasting legal fees pursuing names that are already taken.
Nappy Stock Photography
Looking for diverse book cover art on a budget? Nappy offers high-quality free stock photos featuring black and brown people.
Narrative Magazine Directory of Writers’ Resources
Narrative Magazine, a well-regarded online journal, offers this free-to-access directory of links to literary conferences, books and articles with advice about writing, and degree programs in writing and publishing.
Narrative Magazine’s Directory of Literary Agents
Narrative Magazine, a well-regarded online journal of creative writing, maintains this directory with links to established agents in many genres. The site also includes advice about pitching your book.
Narratively
Founded in 2012, Narratively is an online magazine of journalistic features about "ordinary people with extraordinary stories". They publish longform and shortform articles, short documentary films, photo essays, audio, and comics. Narratively sponsors an annual free writing contest with a large cash prize.
National Assembly of State Arts Agencies
Good source for grant opportunities.
National Association of Writers in Education
Resources include an annual conference for writing teachers and an online bulletin board of jobs and publication opportunities.
National Association of Writers in Education
NAWE supports the development of creative writing of all genres and in all educational and community settings throughout the UK. Resources include an annual conference for writing teachers and an online bulletin board of jobs and publication opportunities.
National Association of Writers’ Groups
UK-based NAWG sponsors its own literary contests and provides information about two dozen others around Britain. The contest listings are updated several times each year. From the NAWG home page, click the Competitions link.
National Centre for Writing
The UK's National Centre for Writing offers courses, curriculum resources, prizes, youth programs, and resources for translators, to name just some of their programs. Check out their list of links to many other British literary organizations.
National Education Association Foundation Grants
Grants for educators at US public schools, colleges and universities to improve student literacy, develop new education programs, and retain qualified teachers in high-risk communities.
National Federation of State Poetry Societies
This nonprofit organization sponsors dozens of annual poetry contests with low entry fees. The individual state societies often sponsor additional contests. Some awards are specifically for middle school, high school, and college students.
National Jukebox
This project at the Library of Congress makes historic recordings of popular and classical music and spoken-word performances available online. Search the archives by artist name and genre, or simply enjoy the eclectic selections of the day. The collection features more than 10,000 78rpm disc sides issued by the Victor Talking Machine Company between 1900 and 1925. Other material from the archives is currently being brought online.
National Novel Writing Month
Jump-start that book you've been meaning to write, with this fun project that dares participants to write a 50,000-word novel between November 1 and November 30 each year. Read your fellow scribblers' work online, share ideas and encouragement in the forums, and write without looking back. NaNoWriMo's philosophy is "quantity over quality": what matters is that you overcome your fear of getting started.
National Schools Project
This group of educators publishes an annual anthology, the Young American Poetry Digest, showcasing poems by US elementary and secondary school students. Each participating school receives a free copy of the book. There are also awards of $100 and $50 for the schools with the most student poems accepted.
National Student Drama Festival
British festival sponsors playwriting contests for young authors in the US and internationally.
Navigation
By Mark Fleisher
As we age, some
glide gracefully,
others stumble
headlong or
feet first
into this new space
Leaf through
the memoir
of the mind,
clear the dust
from old souvenirs,
recall the
master plan
derailed by
unanticipated
events, some
of your
own creation
Remember the voyage,
once smooth,
later blown
off course
but managing
to steer through
troubles without
running aground
Travel along
the path, suddenly
knocked off stride
onto the shoulder,
the loose gravel
bruising the ego,
scraping the psyche
Where we are taken
where we find ourselves
destinations never
imagined when
we sailed
the glass sea or
walked the
unimpeded way
We learned
to play
the hand
as dealt,
still wary
for hornets
are everywhere,
poised to plunge
stingers through
trusting innocence
NEA Military Healing Arts Partnership
The National Endowment for the Arts is a federal agency that gives grants to individual artists and arts organizations in the US. Launched in 2011, the NEA Military Healing Arts Partnership supports creative art therapy programs to help wounded, ill, and injured American service members and their families in their recovery, reintegration or transition to civilian life. In conjunction with the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, this partnership is developing arts programs to treat service members with traumatic brain injury and associated psychological health issues.
Necessary Fiction
Necessary Fiction is an online journal publishing original short stories, book reviews, and essays on writing. In their "Research Notes" column, published authors share informative and quirky stories about doing research for their recent books. Writers in the "Translation Notes" column describe the process of bringing a recent book of fiction into English.
Neglected Books
The Neglected Books blog spotlights "thousands of books that have been neglected, overlooked, forgotten, or stranded by changing tides in critical or popular taste." Posts include reviews, lists, and brief excerpts. Many of the featured works are literary fiction and poetry from the early and mid-20th century, though older works also make an appearance.
Neon Door
Founded in 2021, Neon Door is an immersive online literary space that publishes poetry, fiction, essays, visual art, music, graphic narrative, and video clips. Sign up for their free e-newsletter for book recommendations, literary links, and thought-provoking columns from their editors.
Nepantla
Launched in 2014 by the Lambda Literary Foundation, Nepantla is an online journal of poetry by LGBTQ writers of color. The journal's name is an Aztec-language word for the space between worlds, or liminal space. For guidelines or other questions, contact the editors at nepantla@lambdaliterary.org.
NetManners
Essential points of online etiquette, from marketing and technology expert Judith Kallos. If you want to be taken seriously as a professional writer, courteous, typo-free contest submissions, query letters and weblog entries can make all the difference.
Neurotic Poets
Bios and links to poetry by legendary self-destructive geniuses such as Plath, Byron and Poe.
Never Let Me Go
This quietly heartbreaking and provocative novel is equal parts British boarding-school story, dystopian science fiction, and Kafkaesque fable about conformity. While the premise (human clones harvested for their organs) seems ripped from the headlines, the absence of plausible science in the plot suggests that the clones are a metaphor for the myriad ways we sacrifice our human potential by failing to question authority.
new heat
By Frank Prem
a river of aluminum flowed
beneath the hulk of our car
engine blocks are only alloy
these days
window frames on houses
swam away
and cement sheeting
turned to powder
heat
it's an old word
we need something new
to describe what ran through us
that day
New Kid
By Jerry Craft. In this engaging and important middle-grade graphic novel, Black 7th-grader Jordan Banks is transplanted from his Washington Heights neighborhood to a mostly white and rich prep school in Riverdale, where he uses humor and cartooning to process the challenges of making new friends and coping with microaggressions from students and teachers.
New Letters
Past contributors have included May Sarton, J.D. Salinger, Marianne Moore, Joyce Carol Oates, Tess Gallagher and Richard Wright. See their website for audio archives from their radio program, New Letters on the Air, and rules for their annual writing contests.
New Millennium Writings
"New Millennium Writings is published annually. We accept general submissions January through April of each year. We will consider poetry, for which we pay in two copies, plus fiction, and nonfiction, for which we pay $100, plus two copies, upon acceptance. We're especially interested in interviews and profiles of famous writers or tributes to legendary writers (for our Janus File) who are no longer living but whose influence is still felt."
New Play Exchange
New Play Exchange is a site for playwrights, lyricists, composers, librettists, devising artists, adapters, and translators to read and share scripts. Find your next collaborator or dramatic work to produce at your arts organization, and network with other creators in your genre. Annual fees are just $12 for early-career members and $18 for professionals.
New Plays and the Destructive Cult of Virginity
In this provocative article at the online journal Howlround, lesbian-feminist playwright Carolyn Gage critiques the "previously unpublished/unproduced" requirement in most submission guidelines for contests, magazines, and drama festivals. Gage observes that this system disadvantages writers from less-privileged backgrounds or with radical viewpoints, who may not have access to a high-profile venue for their work's first publication or production, and are then banned from submitting it elsewhere. "I would like to see folks really challenge this obsession with 'purity' as it relates to manuscripts for new work. The protocol is shot-through with patriarchal and deeply classist prerogatives and assumptions about the entire nature of the relationship between the producer/publisher and the playwright. This should be a relationship of equals. I do not demand that they come to my work with no previous experience with producing or publishing, and I find it an insult that they impose a virginity criteria on my work. In their fixation on virginity, these publishers and producers bypass many fresh and innovative plays and they penalize the most entrepreneurial authors."
New World
I crawled for days across the arid Indian plains
until my knee caps bled red and old scars opened
leaving irregular patterns on the hard soil,
seeking the slow flowing Ganges
and searching for silk prayer shawls in the shallow mud.
I dipped my head under the holy waters
looking across to the mouldy green and peeling orange walls
of the eroding temples. Blue saliva stains playing patterns
on the sidewalks seemed to throb and pulse
and the breast pains that I endured pumped up my stomach
into elastic balls that floated with the tides
and currents below, carrying offal and soap suds
that burnt my eyes until I ceased noticing
blank worshippers urinating on banks not so far away.
Holy men limped by and waved with crooked sticks.
Had I transgressed their holy territory and disturbed the calm
as the trees nearby vaguely stirred? I had not seen this sector before
and peeled off my clothes pronouncing that I carried no weapons
nor bibles of the New Testament.
It was only fair that I should float naked.
A holy man with black match stick legs and purple toes
strolled across my wake—the strange strains of sitar rhythms
pierced my ears and deep subterranean tunnel noises
rose to the murky surface in yellow translucent cubes.
My tattered heart tangled in the easy river flow.
My half closed eyes just above the line sought rusty river trams
or logs of debris to help me stay afloat.
But the relentless bloated soap suds burnt my tongue
as I struggled to chant select bible songs.
Laughing filled the blue air and young chocolate coated children
tugged on their garland wreaths, flinging buds and thorns
to where I swam. I choked and coughed
and slowly wore down as the muezzin
from the nearby tower mosque search lighted for
my soul. The high screams of prayers cascaded,
pushing me further down as four black hooded men
dragged me from the flow; I hoped and hoped
they would not sacrifice me in holy flames. I tried to whisper
as they held my arms that I was only looking
for love. Why brand me in sati tradition? I told them,
I know many verses off by heart from the Hindu bible
and the Bhagavad-Gita which is a Song of God. I am untouchable.
I was married to Christ. I was born on a cross.
Does it not count in this new century?
Copyright 2005 by Martin Steele. Mr. Steele was a finalist in our 2003 War Poetry Contest for "Sarel and Samson".
Critique by Jendi Reiter
This month's critique poem, "New World" by Martin Steele, presents an instantly recognizable character: the naive traveler who is seduced and destroyed by a culture he does not understand. This nightmare recurs often in colonial and postcolonial literature, embodying Western fears that our political dominance is neither deserved nor secure. In depicting the alien culture as a primitive destructive force, the writer can suggest both the powerlessness of Western ideals and, paradoxically, their superiority to the natives' barbaric behavior. (This theme was central to the work of 20th-century fiction writer Paul Bowles.)
The narrator of "New World" seems to have come to India on a spiritual pilgrimage. He seeks out extreme experiences that will break down the boundaries of his old self and put him in touch with a deeper reality. To that end, he immerses himself in pain, dirt and decay, violating "civilized" taboos to reach a state where another's bodily fluids are no more alien to him than his own. In his new world, even humble saliva glows in psychedelic colors, and clean and unclean elements commingle shamelessly. A silk scarf could be found in the mud; "offal and soap suds" combine in the holy river.
Yet how real is this oneness? Using the exotic culture as a tool for his own enlightenment, the protagonist fails to comprehend it on its own terms, with fatal consequences. Despite his physical self-abandonment in the first half of the poem, he is in control of the experience. He chose these privations and could turn back if he felt like it.
The first breath of fear stirs with the line, "Had I transgressed their holy territory...?" The protagonist feels control slipping from his grasp, but still naively hopes that his gesture of good faith will placate whomever he has offended: "[I] peeled off my clothes pronouncing that I carried no weapons/nor bibles of the New Testament./It was only fair that I should float naked." He expects his notions of fair play to be perfectly understood by his mysterious observers. But his gesture of contrition—I am not like those others who imposed upon you with their weapons and their Christianity—may seem to them like weakness and disloyalty to his own kind.
Before he quite understands what has happened, the narrator is fighting for survival: "My half closed eyes just above the line sought rusty river trams/or logs of debris to help me stay afloat." In fear, he reverts to the religion he disavowed: "I struggled to chant select bible songs."
As he endeavors not to drown, he attracts hostile attention from figures who have no comparable doubts about what their faith demands: either convert the infidel ("the muezzin/from the nearby tower mosque search lighted for/my soul") or kill him ("four black hooded men/dragged me from the flow"). Vainly he tries to save himself by offering proof of his good intentions ("I was only looking/for love") and his appreciation of all faiths, veering into delusional overstatement.
The protagonist's cry, "I am untouchable," has a paradoxical double meaning in this context. On one level, it could mean "I cannot be harmed by you" or "How dare you touch me"—an assertion of high status. However, "untouchable" is also the name for the lowest caste in traditional Indian society, a pariah group. Is his choice of words merely another unfortunate misunderstanding, or is he trying to convince his hosts that he is one of them—saying, in effect, "I identify completely with your society, even its lowest members"?
I was somewhat confused by the Muslim characters' appearance on the scene, since the culture that the protagonist had been sampling up to that point seemed Hindu (temples, holy beggars, the Ganges). The confusion is increased by his plea to his (presumably) Muslim captors, "Why brand me in sati tradition," since "sati" is a Hindu ritual in which a widow immolates herself on her husband's funeral pyre.
Perhaps the narrator's fatal mistake was not realizing that India, to him a symbol of cosmic unity, is itself torn by Hindu-Muslim animosity. Thus he unwittingly strays into Muslim territory ("I had not seen this sector before") and is taken for an enemy. While logical, this interpretation diminishes the poem's tragic irony. If the culture that destroyed him is not even the one he idealized and misappropriated, his fate starts to seem more like simple bad luck. On the other hand, if the hooded figures are not Muslim, the muezzin seems out of place in a poem that is otherwise all about a Westerner's encounter with Hinduism.
The last line's rhetorical question was also hard to fit into the story as I understood it. Is the protagonist harking back to the colonial era, when Christians expected to be recognized as bearers of a superior civilization? "I was married to Christ. I was born on a cross," he says, his garbled theology reminiscent of explorers who tried to subdue the natives by claiming to be gods from far-off lands. Still, I would like to know what exactly has changed in this century, and why the unlucky narrator thought it would stay the same.
Where could this poem be submitted? "New World" has more dramatic action in it than the personal lyrics that are standard fare in many literary journals. Some politically correct editors may also have trouble with its depiction of non-Western cultures as less than benign. However, the high quality of its imagery could earn it a place in a major magazine. Some markets to consider:
Sunken Garden Poetry Festival National Poetry Competition
Postmark Deadline: February 1
http://www.hillstead.org/
Prize includes reading at festival in Connecticut in July; no simultaneous submissions
Strokestown International Poetry Competitions
Postmark Deadline: February 15
https://strokestownpoetryfest.ie/poetry-competition/
Irish contest offers a prize of 4,000 euros for poems in English and another 4,000 euros for poems in Irish, Scottish Gaelic or Manx
Florida Review Editors' Awards
Postmark Deadline: March 15
http://floridareview.cah.ucf.edu/submit/annual-editors-awards/
Named for Joseph Campbell, the great scholar of mythology, contest seeks published or unpublished poems that "treat larger themes with lyric intensity"
Robinson Jeffers Tor House Prize for Poetry
Postmark Deadline: March 15
http://www.torhouse.org/prize/
Past winners of this $1,000 prize have been emotionally powerful and rich in imagery (read them on website)
This poem and critique appeared in the January 2005 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter.
New York Foundation for the Arts Database
Large directory of opportunities for visual artists, performers and writers. Search by genre, geographic eligibility, type of funding and more.
New York Shakespeare Exchange: The Sonnet Project
The New York Shakespeare Exchange's mission is to expand the audience for Shakespeare's plays and to support innovative presentations. One of their ventures is The Sonnet Project, a series of short films juxtaposing a Shakespeare sonnet and a vignette set in a distinctive NYC location.
New Zealand Poetry Society
Their website includes numerous listings for literary events, resources and contests for writers in New Zealand and abroad.
NewPages
News, information and guides to independent bookstores, independent publishers, literary periodicals, alternative periodicals, independent record labels, alternative newsweeklies and more. See the Big List of Writing Contests.
NewPages Young Writers Guide
NewPages is a resource site showcasing independent presses, literary magazines, bookstores, and creative writing programs. This page on their site offers a vetted list of publications and contests that accept work from youth and teens.
