Resources
From Category:
Hidden Memories
By Jesse James Doty
Boxes of family photos
Uneasy desire to see
how I used to be
before my transition
Have no regrets
and yet
something holds me back
from viewing my past
Wondering how I'll feel
How I'll react
Do I deny my history?
Resist the rising tide
Or is this a rebellious act?
Denying who I was
when I wasn't
how I felt inside
From my memories
do I need to hide?
So hard to decide
Hidden River Arts
HRA offers workshops, readings, an annual writers' conference, and fiction and drama contests.
His Ghost Returns to Frijoles Canyon
By Radha Marcum
To the creek and its snow-
choked wedding.
To sky-bare woods—
pools and drifts. To
slowing trout with
taut, watery bodies
hidden on carved rock.
To mossy isotopes of joy.
To the traces of ones
who cultivated dust—
vessels of reed
vessels of clay—
and left black, sun-flashed
flecks of arrowheads.
To fire-singed cliffs.
Here the Earth held
a man who seeded
a death flower, whose body
once-upon-a-time burned
with sun below
the abandoned caves.
Here he returns,
the summer's musts
laid down to ifs.
Only sparrows
shake the bush.
His Grave
By David Kherdian
I imagine visiting my father's grave
with my cousin Chuck, who once
guided me there, maybe when I was
in my 40s, half a lifetime ago,
to realize only now the importance
of that visit back then,
speaking to the stone above him,
as I might still if I could visit him again,
realizing only now the importance of
some acts, that cannot be explained,
whose meanings lie silently within us,
wanting now just to be a little closer to him
in this way, or any other way that returns
me to his love, that I was ever too young
to understand, but that I can feel now
from wanting to return his love with my own,
joined together now in silence
with nothing for my hands to hold
that I grasp with my pencil,
that like my father, cannot grasp back.
Historica Canada
Historica Canada (formerly the Historica Dominion Institute) is a national nonprofit that helps Canadians connect with their country's history, culture, civic institutions, and democratic values. The site includes oral histories, aboriginal arts, lesson plans for educators, and the "Heritage Minutes" series of short documentary videos.
Historical Restaurant Menus at the NYPL
The New York Public Library's website features this growing archive of 17,000+ restaurant menus from the 1850s through today. A good resource for historical fiction writers to discover notable restaurants from their book's era and what the characters might have eaten.
Holy Cow! Press
Founded in 1977, Holy Cow! Press is an independent small press whose mission is to publish the very best collections of Midwest writings and develop an audience for those books regionally and nationally. They have published books of poetry, short fiction, memoirs, novels, plays, children's and young adult titles, biographies and anthologies centered around important themes. Authors in their catalog include Natalie Goldberg, Brenda Ueland, Meridel Le Sueur, Diane Glancy, and Ray A. Young Bear.
Holy Tango of Literature
Francis Heaney's brilliant poetic parodies with a twist: the subject of the poem is an anagram of the famous writer's name. Hence T.S. Eliot opines on "Toilets" ("Let us go then, to the john..."), Coleridge's ancient mariner goes on an acid trip in "Multicolored Argyle Sea", Blake lauds Fred Flintstone's wife in "Likeable Wilma", and Ogden Nash wonders why his chickens aren't breeding in "Hen Gonads".
Hometown Reads
Sponsored by the digital marketing firm Weaving Influence, Hometown Reads is an online community dedicated to matching local authors with bookstores and customers in their area. Authors in one of their featured cities can put up a page about their books for free. Other networking tools include a blog and city-specific Facebook groups. If you live in a Hometown not currently showcased on their site and are willing to help gather authors in your area, contact Hometown Reads to suggest adding your locale to their directory.
Homology Lit
Homology Lit is a Pacific Northwest-based online literary magazine for people of color, queer folks, and people with disabilities, founded by Savannah Slone in July 2018. Contributors have included Dagmawe Berhanu, Donte Collins, Kailah Figueroa, and Danielle Rose.
Honeysuckle Press
Brooklyn-based Honeysuckle Press is a small literary press affiliated with Winter Tangerine Review. Their mission statement says they are "committed to expanding and redefining human truths by prioritizing the narratives of unsung communities." The press accepts queries year-round for full-length poetry collections and short story collections, and also offers a free contest for prose and poetry chapbook manuscripts.
Horror Tree
Run by novelist and JournalStone Network editor Stuart Conover, Horror Tree is a resource site for horror and speculative fiction writers that includes submission calls, craft essays, and author interviews.
Hour of Writes
Hour of Writes is a UK-based online writing forum that hosts weekly writing contests judged by the site members. Each week, a prompt is posted on the site, and entrants have one hour (from the time they click "start") to submit a poem or short prose piece in response. Every piece is critiqued, and the winner each week receives a modest cash prize. There is a small entry fee plus the obligation to judge three other entries. The site's mission is to encourage people to devote one hour each week to working on their creative writing.
House of McQueen
By Valerie Wallace. Winner of the Four Way Books Intro Prize, this poetry collection inspired by British fashion designer Alexander McQueen (1969-2010) captures the meticulousness and melancholy of his oeuvre, though lacking the messiness and horror that gave his work its raw energy. The standout quality of this book is Wallace's innovative use of erasure and recombination of found texts to produce beautifully coherent new poems, some of them in demanding forms like the sonnet sequence. Her collage aesthetic references McQueen's penchant for constructing clothes out of unlikely materials such as seashells, microscope slides, and dried flowers.
How Books Win Awards: Advice from C. Hope Clark
C. Hope Clark is the author of the Carolina Slade mystery series from Bell Bridge Books, and the editor of the FundsForWriters newsletter and website. In this guest post at author Glenda C. Beall's blog, Clark describes what judges look for in contests for small press and self-published books. Also included are her tips for spotting scams and protecting your rights.
How Novelty Ruined the Novel
In this 2017 essay from Current Affairs, Brianna Rennix takes a skeptical look at popular experimental devices in contemporary literary novels. She argues that these tricks have become cliché, interfering with the genre's unique potential to entertain and provoke empathy. For fun, test your MFA syllabus or this week's New York Times Book Review against the Postmodern Novel Bingo card: "Entire chapter is just a list of ironic brand names"; "Tepid marriage ruined by unsatisfying infidelity"; "A lumbering comedic setpiece is suddenly interrupted by horrific violence"; and more.
How the Boy Might See It
By Charlie Bondhus. Finding one's identity is just the beginning of the struggle, in this updated and expanded version of an award-winning gay poet's debut collection. With lyricism and an empathetic imagination, Bondhus claims a place for himself within multiple traditions, daring to juxtapose a comic tryst with a resurrected Walt Whitman, a disciple's erotic memories of Jesus, and the lament of a post-Edenic Adam. New work in this edition includes the poem suite "Diane Rehm Hosts Jesus Christ on NPR", narrated by a very human messiah who "would speak about what God shares with humanity...I mean loneliness".
How to Be a Good Beta Reader
In this article from the self-publishing and marketing service BookBaby, science writer Dawn Field shares eight tips for giving useful feedback on a manuscript.
How to Build an Author Website
Author websites have become an essential marketing tool. In this 2020 update of her 2015 article, publishing expert Jane Friedman shows you how to get started designing a professional-looking site with the key information about you and your books.
How to Do a Killer Reading from Your Work
This guest column at Lit Mag News by Lambda Award winning novelist Lev Raphael offers tips for giving an engaging and polished performance of your work, online or in person.
How To Do It Frugally
Website of Carolyn Howard-Johnson, award-winning author of 'The Frugal Book Promoter' and 'The Frugal Editor', contains a wealth of advice for writers and publishers on how to generate publicity for their titles on a limited budget.
How to Find the Poetry Contest that is Best for You
Targeting the right publisher for your kind of work is the key to improving your poetry contest odds and advancing your career as a writer. If you were looking for a job, you wouldn't mass-mail your resume to every listing in the classifieds, yet too many beginning writers will pick up a contest directory and do just that. Fortunately, it's possible to bring some rationality to this confusing process by following a few simple guidelines.
First, you need to read widely and perceptively enough to understand where your work fits into the diverse landscape of contemporary poetry. Decide what's most important to you about winning a contest—prize money, prestige, wide readership, editorial feedback, or making connections with other writers. Competition is a two-way street; the hundreds of contests out there are also contending for a share of your entry-fee budget. Learn to recognize the signs of a contest that's unreliable or doesn't offer good value for your money and effort.
Understand your style and experience level
Poetry is so idiosyncratic, and its practitioners so opinionated, that I hesitate to divide writers into only a few "schools" or "movements". However, for purposes of this article, I'd like to mention three broad categories of writing, which I'll call traditional/formal, narrative free verse, and experimental. It's rare to find a contest that's equally open to all three.
The best way to explain these distinctions is by example. Here are three quite different poems on spiritual themes.
Traditional/formal
In the traditional category, Judith Goldhaber's "Mea Culpa: A Crown of Sonnets" won the 2005 "In the Beginning Was the Word" Literary Arts Contest from the Lake Oswego United Church of Christ. Goldhaber writes sonnets with the ease of contemporary speech, using images from the world we live in today, not only the Shakespearean and Romantic vocabulary to which the form often tempts us. In my mind, this makes her quite an original writer, but she wouldn't be considered "experimental" because she adheres strictly to the form. Her sonnet sequence straightforwardly takes on the age-old problem of evil and free will:
...I spread my wings and fell into the sky,
beating those wings and rising towards the sun
in ecstasy. It's true, I am the one
who did this thing, and I cannot deny
I gave no thought to who might live or die.
To tell the truth, when all is said and done
I'd do it all again, and yield to none
my right to live my life as butterfly.
So, mea culpa! Guilty after all!
"I am become death, destroyer of the world,"
said Oppenheimer, as the dark cloud swirled
above the swiftly rising fireball
at Alamogordo, when he lit the fuse:
you've seen the headlines and you've heard the news.
Free verse
Nigerian poet Chris Abani's "The New Religion" represents the best of narrative free verse. Lesser examples of this form can resemble prose chopped into short lines, without any poetic techniques like metaphor or non-realist imagery. Understandable on first reading, yet rich with questions that linger, Abani's earthy phrases awaken us to smell, feel, and savor the meaning of the Incarnation:
...The body is a savage, I said.
For years I said that, the body is a savage.
As if this safety of the mind were virtue
not cowardice. For years I have snubbed
the dark rub of it, said, I am better, lord,
I am better, but sometimes, in an unguarded
moment of sun I remember the cow-dung-scent
of my childhood skin thick with dirt and sweat
and the screaming grass.
But this distance I keep is not divine
for what was Christ if not God's desire
to smell his own armpit?
Experimental
At the experimental end of the spectrum, we have Christian Hawkey's "Night Without Thieves", an excerpt from his collection The Book of Funnels (Wave Books), which won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. This poem doesn't have a narrative line that one could summarize, instead using more subtle tactics to hint at gospel concerns—the offbeat use of Biblical rhetoric ("yea unto those..."), and the promise of liberation from our fears and our narrowly rational ways of thinking:
The day is going to come—it will come—put on your nightgown,
put on your fur. And yea unto those who go unclothed,
unshod, without fear, fingering the corners
of bright countertops
and calmly, absentmindedly, toeing the edges of clouds
drifting in a puddle. Put on your deep-sea gear,
your flippers, and walk to the end
of the driveway.
It will come. Be not afraid to chase large animals.
Who publishes what
The most prestigious and lucrative contests are typically run by university-affiliated literary journals and presses. These publishers want to see that entrants are familiar with developments in contemporary poetry, and that their work has a modern feel to it. Ambiguity, irony and restraint are favored over Romantic sentiment and epic pomposity, and innovation may command higher marks than accessibility. For amateur writers whose poetic education ended with the classics in high school, this will require some catching up.
Outside the culture of academia, some small presses have a more populist flavor, seeking work that is complex enough to be satisfying, yet speaks in the voices of ordinary people. Standouts here include Perugia Press, Pearl Editions, Main Street Rag, and Steel Toe Books. My impression is that British contests are less "academic" in their tastes than American ones.
Traditional formal poetry tends to be segregated in journals specifically devoted to that aesthetic. Some publishers that appreciate classic verse include Waywiser Press, The New Criterion, Measure, and The Lyric. Contests run by local and amateur writers' groups may also be more open to old-fashioned styles and themes.
Researching the tastes of different literary journals has never been easier, thanks to the Internet. I do encourage people to support their favorite journals by buying a subscription, but I recognize that it's not practical to buy every magazine where you might submit your work. Subscribe to poem-a-day websites like Poetry Daily or Verse Daily, which reprint samples from the best independent and university-run small presses.
Know your priorities
Why do you want to win a poetry contest? (If the answer is "To become rich and famous," you're working in the wrong genre.) Different contests have different strengths. Here are some examples of the tradeoffs you might consider.
Let's say you're shopping around a poetry book manuscript. Wherever you're published, you'll have to do most of the marketing yourself. If you're a professor who can assign the book to your class, or you're hooked in to the local poetry community and could easily set up readings at cafes, libraries and bookstores in your area, you might not mind a smaller cash prize in exchange for more free copies of your winning book. Twenty copies is average, 50+ is above-average. Two well-regarded, long-running contests offering 50+ copies include Main Street Rag's Annual Poetry Book Award and the Gerald Cable Book Award.
On the other hand, if hand-selling your books is more of a challenge, you'd be better off entering a contest with a larger prize that you can spend on marketing efforts, such as postcard mailings and online advertising. Some major literary publishers, such as Tupelo Press and Kore Press, offer above-average publicity for their writers through their email newsletters, but keep in mind that they're extremely competitive.
Many contests for single poems will publish other entrants besides the top winner. This can be quite a perk if the contest is sponsored by a prestigious journal. New Millennium Writings and Atlanta Review are among the top-tier literary periodicals that publish a good number of finalists from their contests.
Web publication and other benefits
Web publication may not have quite as much cachet as an appearance in an established print journal, but I believe that the gap will close in the next few years as economics force more periodicals to go virtual. Online publication also offers the potential to reach a larger audience. Whereas most printed poetry journals report a circulation of a few thousand at most, an online poem can be distributed more widely, for free, with a link in your email newsletter, website, blog, or Facebook page. (Serious authors should have at least one of the above.)
Some contests invite winners and runners-up to read at an award ceremony. These can be wonderful opportunities for networking and book sales, not to mention the thrill of connecting with a live audience. Writing can be a lonely vocation. Coming face-to-face with appreciative readers is one way to recharge your creativity. Look for contests sponsored by writers' groups in your area, where you could make useful long-term contacts. Here, the tradeoff is sometimes lower prize money and prestige, in exchange for a more solid local fan base.
The Academy of American Poets provides state-by-state listings of events, literary journals, writing programs, poetry organizations, and more. The National Federation of State Poetry Societies also has a links directory, though it may not be as up-to-date. Visit the "Literary Societies and Associations" page in the Resources section at Winning Writers to find more specialized groups.
Avoid low-quality contests
Once your poem is published, it's ineligible for most contests. Only send your work to publications where you'd be proud to have it appear.
A contest's prize structure can clue you in about the sponsor's level of professionalism. I generally advise writers not to enter a contest whose fee is more than 10% of the top prize. I'm also not a fan of contests where the prize is a percentage of fees received. Without a guaranteed minimum prize, you're bearing too much of the risk that the sponsor won't adequately publicize the contest. I've seen some good small presses get in trouble because they relied on next year's fees to fund last year's obligations, instead of putting aside the prize money at the start.
Consider the look and feel of the contest's website. Avoid sites with multiple typos, grammatical errors, and cheesy clip art. Are the names of past winners hard to find? Don't let someone publish your book if they're going to let it fall into obscurity. A site with a lot of outdated information might indicate that the publisher doesn't devote a lot of attention to their business; lacks the technical skill to promote your work effectively online; or would be hard to reach once you had a contract with them. This is especially a problem for poetry book and chapbook contests. A technically savvy, responsive publisher is worth much more than a prestigious but elusive one.
Don't be dejected if rejected
Finally, let me say that I have mixed feelings about contests as validation for one's writing abilities. I remember how ecstatic I was to win my very first poetry award (an Honorable Mention from Cricket Magazine, at age 12)—I don't think any subsequent prize has given me a greater rush! Some of our poetry contest winners at Winning Writers, whose work has never appeared in print before, tell us that now they feel like a "real writer." So I wouldn't want to minimize the joy of debut publication, or the ego boost that can help an emerging poet make a serious commitment to her writing.
However, you're going to get a lot more rejection than validation, and internalizing others' opinions of your worth will lead to writers' block or fearful, unoriginal writing. Don't be "tossed about by every wind of doctrine" (Eph 4:14). Become a good enough reader of your own work to know when it's successful on your terms, and remember that even Shakespeare and Dickens don't suit every taste. The more innovative you are, the more passionate your critics and your fans will be.
Keep these guidelines in mind and you're sure to spend your time and entry fees more wisely!
Copyright 2009 by Jendi Reiter. Reprinted with permission from Utmost Christian Writers. This article first appeared in their "Poet's Classroom" series for June 2009.
How to Find the Right Agent for Your Book
This 2023 article by Emily Harstone at the writing resource site AuthorsPublish gives an overview of the process of finding the right agents to query. The article includes links to scam-busting sites and online forums where you can find agents seeking work in your genre.
How to Help Prisoners Get Books
In this article at Electric Lit, NYC Books Through Bars explains how to support prison books projects or start your own. Book donations help prisoners with rehabilitation and maintaining community ties, but mailing rules vary widely from one facility to the next, so it's always a good idea to check with established prisoner-support organizations to see what materials are needed and allowed.
How to Make a Living as a Poet
Successful slam poet offers creative ways to support a career as a full-time writer. Also includes advice about how to give good readings, write effective press releases, and other practical skills.
How to Make a Zine
Zines are self-published, limited-edition miniature magazines, often illustrated or multimedia. They have long been popular with independent authors, fandom communities, and grassroots political movements. This article from My Modern Met, a creativity and lifestyles website, demonstrates the materials, layout, and binding options for an attractive and easy-to-make zine.
How to Paint a Dead Man
By Harry Bauld. With mordant wit and erudition, the poems in this chapbook dissect artistic masterpieces from Rembrandt to Basquiat, to analyze the nature of fame, genius, and mortality. Several pieces are from the perspective of cogs in the commercial art machine—docents, consumers, or anonymous assistants to the famous painter (who are actually doing most of the work). Others remix words from news stories, textbooks, and artists' monographs, as if to warn that no body of work is immune to being decomposed.
How to Read to Children
In this excerpt from his book The Art of Teaching Children (Avid Reader Press), elementary teacher and education expert Phillip Done gives tips for making story hour as engaging as possible. He encourages reading aloud to children in upper grades as well, since it keeps students engaged with literature and allows them to experience what good writing feels like.
How to Respond to Criticism of Your Poetry
This month, in a special edition of Critique Corner, we deviate from our usual format to address a topic close to our hearts: how to accept and use criticism.
Dear reader, I feel I must insist: There is only one way to do it, only one way to respond to criticism of your poetry: "Thank you for your time and interest. You have given me food for thought."
I offer these words in quotation, as a model; I offer them for your safety. I mean that—those are our poems out there. Just as you need to stop and look before you turn right on a red light, for your own sake and that of others, this is a rule of the road. You never know who's hurtling at you down the Avenue of Communication.
Of this much I am certain, as a strategy it will not fail you. Honor the risk required to offer comment; retain your autonomy as author. However you convey it, your reply will come off upbeat and brave.
It sounds simple. It's not. It can be one of the hardest things that, we, as poets, must master. Must, because, if we don't, we will never grow and learn. And if we stop doing that, we eventually stop writing.
Why does this work? Because writers are talkers, but to use critical feedback, we have to listen. Let me show you how a reply like, "I really appreciate your thoughts; they will be with me when I revise," can help you switch the talker off, so that you can benefit from the time and attention people have taken to consider your work.
Your Wish is My Command
"If this were my poem, I would cut the last stanza," and so you do.
"I went to a lecture by a famous poet and I am sure he would tell you to cut the first stanza." With that, stanza two? History.
"I don't see how the middle stanza is working for you?" So much for your triolet!
Poets are often eager to please. Poets are often impressionable. But poems are not the work of committees. If you're taking every comment, you may be losing the you in your poem. Not every comment every person makes is going to serve the poem or your vision of it. So, lift your finger off that delete key; you know what to do: "Lots of really great input! I thank you so much for your time and attention." Then set the notes aside to return to another time.
You know you have heard an idea worth heeding when the same comment, or a comment about the same phrase or quality, arises again and again. You know you have heard an idea worth heeding when it refers to the very line or image you were uncertain of yourself. Sometimes a little "aha!" will sound within you when someone offers an idea you wish you'd had yourself. Wonderful!
The Defense Rests
Someone has just commented on your poem. They're wrong, of course. Obviously. More than that, they're insane, boorish, and wouldn't know a good poem if it took off the top of their head. Of course, you're too refined to say so (or at least you know that if you do, you might not be asked to return to the group, class, or forum you are working with). So you sigh, patiently gather your words, and present your case—or worse, you interrupt—"You're not seeing my point..." you say. No one contradicts you. Clearly you have persuaded them.
Well, the last sentence is true anyway. Everyone is now convinced that it's not worthwhile to offer you honest opinions. Ask yourself: what would they have to gain by arguing with you about your piece? They will either stop offering you feedback altogether, or, if it's a situation where comment is required, proffer vague blandishments.
This can become a dangerous cycle. Your defensive posture makes it uncomfortable for anyone to give you anything but praise; you receive nothing but praise and believe there is nothing to improve.
How to avoid this? "Such smart and interesting replies! I can see you gave this some time and I want to thank you for that." One thing that helps, if you are working with other people in a room, is to take verbatim notes. You may be head-down, biting the inside of your cheek the whole time, but your hands will be scribbling away. You won't have time to formulate push-back. If you are working online, massage the input somehow. For example, make a separate document and turn the notes into some sort of outline. This way you can process them without actively responding.
In both cases, set the notes aside to return to another time.
Straight from the Horse's Mouth
If a horse made a comment on one of my poems, I'd like to think I would listen. But what if it came from a jackass? Using criticism is no different from reading an op-ed page: you have to consider the source. I regret I must add, dear reader, though once again, for your own good: be sure to ask yourself if the source stands to make any money from your continued allegiance.
This is actually more important than whether you like the source's poetry. A better question is whether you think his or her comments on other people's poems improve those poems? Do they reflect your sensibility? Sometimes wonderful poets, even famous ones, have no talent for helping someone else achieve the poem they'd intended.
Which is not to say that they have nothing to say. Everyone has something to say, even—maybe especially—non-poets. We write for the response of readers. Be grateful for it. Honor every comment as you would have your own met: "Dear Online Poetry Editor, I know you receive a lot of mail, and I thank you for the time you've taken on my work. You've given me new ways to see this piece." Then set the notes aside.
Sometimes poets, perhaps from an impulse to focus, censure: "Thanks, but I'm only looking for comments about my title." Beware. For one thing, you never know what comments will resonate or spark inspiration in later pieces. Besides, you might happen to be seated next to a large animal veterinarian with a specialty in dentistry: someone with just the right instrument for the job.
Love is Blind
You wake up from a feverish dream and grab your pen. Your very words flush with bright vitality. Mama was right; you are brilliant. Just wait until you show it to the gang tonight. You leave the poem you'd prepared standing at the altar as you take your new love in hand. But ah, will you still respect her in the morning?
To benefit from criticism requires distance. Fresh work, the kind that still reverberates in our inner ears, is not yet seasoned for outside influence. Hear me now, you know I care: when possible show your penultimate poem, if not something even older. But should your crush prove too irresistible and you find yourself wounded to the core, summon your courage, you can do it: "I see. Thank you. A lot to think about. I'm sure I will." Okay, that might not be the best response, but, hey, you did it! And the notes will be there when you're ready.
The Twelfth of Never
We have been setting an awful lot of notes aside. Now what? A big bonfire?
The time to take up a revision of a poem is, of course, any time the mood strikes you. Reading newsletters like this one, full of opportunities and deadlines, can provide inspiration, as can a class. If you have some sort of regular exchange with other poets, set aside some of them each year for revisions.
New perspectives are especially fruitful. If you admire someone else's poetry, ask yourself why, then revisit your old work. Reading critical essays or attending live intensives and craft lectures can also re-open poems in a useful way.
This essay appeared in the December 2010 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
How To Submit: Getting Your Writing Published with Literary Magazines and Small Presses
By Dennis James Sweeney. This concise, friendly guide to building a literary career in the small press world is a one-stop shop for all your questions, from the "how" to the "why" to "what next?" Learn about selecting the right journal for your work, the mechanics of the process from both sides of the editor's desk, keeping track of submissions, what happens when your book is published, keeping up faith in your writing, and identifying your deepest personal goals for your work in the world. The focus is on community-building, first and foremost. Think of your publications as part of a conversation rather than a judgment on your worth. Sweeney is an experimental essayist, poet, and teacher at Amherst College and GrubStreet in Boston.
How to Survive a Summer
By Nick White. In this contemporary Southern Gothic novel, a disaffected young man must confront his memories of an "ex-gay conversion" camp he was forced to attend as a teen, when another former camper makes a horror movie based on a death that occurred there. The book parallels the structure of traumatic memory recovery, converging on the pivotal time period with scenes set before and after the protagonist's fateful summer. His Christian family members are drawn with depth and compassion, and the surprising redemptive ending feels earned.
How to Write a Killer Fairy Tale Retelling
In this article from the Fairy Tale News blog, Tahlia Merrill, editor of Timeless Tales Magazine, shares six tips for ensuring that your remixed fairy tale adds something fresh and interesting to the original. For example, she suggests reading multiple versions of the fable to pick out intriguing details, or considering a different setting or point-of-view character.
How to Write a Memoir
William Zinsser (1922-2015) was a widely published journalist who wrote for periodicals such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The New York Herald Tribune. His seven books on the craft of writing include On Writing Well. In this article from The American Scholar, where he was a regular columnist, Zinsser gives sound practical advice about how to structure your memoir, and stresses the importance of recording your family story, whether or not you seek publication.
How to Write Attention-Grabbing Promo Copy for Books
In this guest post on the book marketing website BookBub, M.J. Rose, founder of the ad agency AuthorBuzz, gives detailed advice about writing your ad copy and targeting it to different audiences.
How to Write in 700 Easy Lessons
In this essay from The Atlantic's 2010 fiction issue, novelist Richard Bausch argues that writers' manuals are a poor substitute for honing one's aesthetic sense through immersion in great literature. "One doesn't write out of some intellectual plan or strategy; one writes from a kind of beautiful necessity born of the reading of thousands of good stories poems plays… One is deeply involved in literature, and thinks more of writing than of being a writer. It is not a stance."
How to Write Your First Comic Book
Cultural essayist and journalist Jude Ellison S. Doyle (Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers) describes how they taught themselves the conventions of writing their first comic book, the feminist horror comic MAW (Boom! Studios, 2021), as well as tips on working with illustrators and editors.
Huffington Post: Beyond the Battlefield
This 10-part series from online newspaper The Huffington Post features real-life stories of the physical and emotional challenges, victories and setbacks that catastrophically wounded soldiers encounter after returning home.
Hum
Winner of the 2012 Beatrice Hawley Award from Alice James Books, this electric debut collection embodies the vitality and struggle of becoming a man. The word "elegy" is not entirely right for such energetic, muscular poems, but there is mourning here for May's native Detroit and the men of his family who were scarred by addiction, war, and racism. The speaker of these poems fights back with beauty, noticing the shine of the handcuffs while enduring police harassment, or the inspiring message on the plastic bag that holds his relative's ashes "in a Chinese takeout box". In the age of e-readers, AJB's elegant book design makes a case for the pleasures of print. Poems titled after various phobias are interspersed through the book on black paper with white type, creating moments of visual "hush" amid the "hum" of text.
Humor Writing Websites Directory at Point in Case
Humor website Points in Case has compiled a list of 50+ humor writing sites, with brief descriptions of their specialties. The list can be sorted and searched by genre (general humor, niche humor, or news satire), frequency of publication, keywords and more.
Hunger
By Kym Cunningham
You said I was unfit
for human consumption
that promises had spoiled me
saturating my skin with
lies neither of us could keep
I don't want to be our escaped goat
bucking at the slaughter
I don't want you to
disembowel me like tree fruit
letting my seeds dehisce your mouth
I never said I could be selfless
I never said I had the answers
I never said I'd give you my life
let you churn me up, skim me alive
spread me on soured dough
Now you've left me out and
the butter's curdled, the jam's attracting flies
you've begun to mold
one of us must clarify
we can't trick the starving into eating us anymore
Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body
By Roxane Gay. In this starkly honest and courageous memoir, the bestselling fiction writer and feminist commentator shares her complex and ongoing story of childhood trauma, eating disorders, and navigating prejudice against fat bodies. After being gang-raped at age 12, Gay self-medicated her emotional pain with food and became obese as armor against the world. She offers no easy answers or tales of miracle diets, but rather something more valuable: a role model for learning to cherish and nourish yourself in a genuine way despite society's cruelty toward "unruly" bodies.
I Am a Rothko Painting
By Kevin Hinkle
Canvas stretched across a frame, rough and dry.
I'm a Rothko painting—deep red,
brown, and orange. I'm February brooding,
suffocation from a lack of sun.
My therapist tells me to appreciate
my moods, to talk back and walk on. I nod...
but I'm Rothko painting.
I can't bear mirrors and self-contemplation.
I'm a Rothko painting, and it's difficult
to accept beauty’s nuclear age.
I remind myself that sunlight varies by season,
meaning depends on context.
Rothko painted me layer on layer;
now let me hang and dry.
I Am Still a Child
By Mahnaz Badihian
As if years and days were asleep
I'm still that little child
that loves her lacy shoes,
and her errant hair
that hardly reaches her shoulders.
As if years and days were asleep
and my hands still are
those of a child,
demanding another hand
to jump over a creek,
and my childish heart
gets confused by the
first encounter with love.
What happened to all those years,
have I lost the experience of
living in this strange world.
I'm still a child in my mother’s eyes,
who never left this house.
Come and see this child.
She has tamed the years,
and the moon engulfed
in her childish palms.
I Forgot, Like You, to Die: 12 Palestinian Writers Respond to the Ongoing Nakba
This 2018 post at LitHub offers a sampling of protest literature by Palestinian writers on the 70th anniversary of the Nakba, the destruction of hundreds of villages and displacement of 750,000 Palestinians when the state of Israel was founded in 1948.
I Had Buckets
By Howard Faerstein
There were arctic ice dams & bent busted eaves
in that ramshackle house in the woods—
ceiling falling, plaster peeling,
lath exposed—& I had buckets,
though of different colors,
strategically placed so the five cats,
exiles also, could lap water
at any time in any room.
That was when my nails began breaking,
then bleeding, my first term
as a professor, age fifty, having left the city
to teach argument to college freshmen.
The Chair provided advice,
just remember you're smarter than they are.
& the students questioned why
I wore bandages on every finger
& I confessed my envy of them
& lectured them on rhetorical formulas
when composing essays on controversial issues;
for instance, capital punishment:
how my father had killed two men,
in self-defense he'd said;
environmental sustainability:
how Mao's Four Pests campaign
eradicated sparrows, leading to the Great Famine
when twenty million perished & the locusts grew fat;
& we spent a class on Stalin's Night of the Murdered Poets
when we took up censorship,
also how Alan Freed's rock & roll show
was banned in Boston & later in the semester
I spoke of the silence between brothers,
of young men in India dialing wrong numbers
hoping for love, on the rising mortality rate
among white, midlife Americans,
& how I've always wanted
in the soft wallow of time
to witness snow falling over an ocean.
Then I told them about my ex-wife's abortion,
never mentioning the father.
I Think I Should Give Up Exercise
By Elizabeth Marchitti
I think I have given up exercise
unless you count the trip from the living room
where I sit, feet up, reading, to the kitchen
where my new washer/dryer hums
doing its job with grace
Silence tells me the dryer has stopped
It's time to fold the laundry.
I stand to do that, make a neat pile
of towels and t-shirts, return
to my lounge chair and my novel, feet up
I think I have given up exercise
unless you count trips
to J.C. Penney's, Barnes & Noble,
or the Totowa Public Library,
unless you count the long walk
down the aisle at the Paper Mill Playhouse.
Or the short walk, after John has parked the car,
to the Montclair Public Library
or the Hamilton Club in Paterson,
to attend poetry readings.
I think I have given up exercise,
unless you count how happily I jump up
and walk to the podium
to read at various Open Mikes.
Soon I will swim
in the heated indoor pool
at the Bird-In-Hand Family Inn
in Amish Country, Pennsylvania
This is so easy, so much fun.
Can it be called exercise?
In June I will swim
in the outdoor heated pool
at the Beachcomber Resort
In Avalon, Three Mile Island.
This is too easy
to be called exercise.
I will exercise my brain
by reading Murakami,
Alice Hoffman
and the poems of those
poets I love.
It's time to slow down,
Relax, to grow old
Disgracefully.
I’ll Meet You in Your Dreams
By Jessica Young, illustrated by Rafael López. This tender story, illustrated in rich, soothing colors, follows a brown-skinned mother and son as he grows up, has a child of his own, and feels her presence among the stars after she has become an ancestor.
i’m alive / it hurts / i love it
By Joshua Jennifer Espinoza. This poet's first full-length book transforms the raw material of emotions into visionary language without losing their sincerity and immediacy. The untitled short poems can be read as sections of a single long work, as journal entries, or as miniature worlds in their own right, composed of clouds and hormones and rain on the freeway and blood and mirrors. Each represents the daily choice to feel everything, though pain coexists with joy. Espinoza writes with honesty and wit about her life as a transgender woman who manages anxiety and depression.
IBPA Hybrid Publisher Criteria
The Independent Book Publishers Association released these guidelines in 2018 to help small presses adhere to best practices, and to assist authors in distinguishing a legitimate author-publisher cost-sharing model from a vanity press. IBPA's Hybrid Publisher Criteria require that hybrid publishers behave just like traditional publishers in all respects, except when it comes to business model. Hybrid publishers use an author-subsidized business model, as opposed to financing all costs themselves, and in exchange return a higher-than-industry-standard share of sales proceeds to the author. In other words, although hybrid publishing companies are author-subsidized, they are different from other author-subsidized models in that they adhere to professional publishing standards. IBPA's standards include a competitive editorial selection process, high-quality book design, distribution services, and respectable sales figures.
IBPA’s Best Practices for Hybrid Publishers
In 2022 the Independent Book Publishers Association proposed these best-practices guidelines for hybrid publishers, in response to reports that indie authors were losing money on poor book design and misleading promises of royalties. Among their criteria: hybrid publishers should be selective, publish under their own imprint with a clearly defined mission and aesthetic for the press, provide distribution services, and have a track record of sales comparable to other presses in their genre.
