Resources
From Category:
Letter to My Parents Long Gone from 853 Riverside Drive
By Norbert Hirschhorn
I think of you often,
especially on your birthdays
(July 19, November 29),
each of you divine,
your spirits nesting inside me.
You gave me life. Full stop.
What you endured to see me through:
abandoning your parents to the Shoah,
uprooted, flight, turmoil in America.
And I, know-it-all, hardly knew
what you went through—I fled,
abandoned you, even as
you stayed faithful to me.
My most sorrowful apologies,
Your firstborn son
Slated
Slated is an online marketplace for film packaging, financing, and distribution. Writers can network with industry professionals and receive feedback on how to make their scripts more marketable.
Stage 32
Stage 32 is a screenwriters' social network and resource site. Basic membership is free. Paid membership tiers include online webinars and intensive classes by entertainment industry professionals, and access to script consultations and pitch sessions.
Feed the Beast
By Pádraig Ó Tuama. Rage, survival, and the tentative beginning of self-love infuse this poetry chapbook about theological and sexual abuse in the Irish Catholic Church. The author was forced into "conversion therapy" for his homosexuality by a priest who molested him. Broken Sleep Books, the publisher of this collection, is a Welsh literary press with an interest in social justice and working-class themes.
Hail and Farewell
By Abby E. Murray. This incisive debut poetry collection from Perugia Press is narrated by a military wife who chafes against the isolation and patriarchal gender expectations of her role on the homefront. Combining plain-spoken heartache and biting humor, these poems explore the erasure of women's labor.
Camp Damascus
By Chuck Tingle. An autistic lesbian teen discovers the horrific secrets of the ex-gay camp that dominates her small Montana community. Forget about demons—the scariest part of this tale is the smiley-face gaslighting that our heroine endures from her parents and the celebrity pastor of the town's prosperity-gospel church. An excellent fast-paced novel with humor and poetic justice served hot.
The Boy in the Rain
By Stephanie Cowell. In this bittersweet historical novel set in Edwardian England, a young painter and an aspiring socialist politician fall in love, but their idyll is overshadowed by the criminalization of homosexuality. This book stands out for its meditative, introspective prose and its insight into how the bonds of love are tested, broken, and re-created as two people mature.
The Essay as Experiment
In this Poets & Writers Craft Capsule from 2023, Christine Imperial (Mistaken for an Empire: A Memoir in Tongues, Mad Creek Books) suggests returning to the literal meaning of "essay" as "an attempt," embracing disjunction and uncertainty in our writing process instead of forcing the narrative into the neat mainstream comprehensibility we learned in school.
Apogee Journal
Founded in 2011 by writers of color and international students in Columbia University's graduate writing program, Apogee is an independently published online journal of literature and art that encourages the thoughtful exploration of identity and its intersections, including but not limited to: race, gender, sexuality, class, and ability. Editors say, "The word 'apogee' denotes the point in an object’s orbit that is farthest from the center. Our approach to both art and political activism operates with the same motivation to center underrepresented artistic voices from the political margins." Apogee features poetry, fiction, essays, and artwork. Their companion journal, Perigee, publishes book reviews and author interviews.
When Do I Earn Out?
Fantasy novelist and software engineer Hana Lee created this free online calculator to determine how many books you must sell to earn out your advance. Input your royalty rates and list prices for hardcover, paperback, e-book, or audiobook sales to see your sales targets and how much your publisher will earn.
The Dial
Subtitled "the world's little magazine," The Dial was founded in 2022 to create an international dialogue among writers and journalists on themes of social change. Editors say, "Our pieces will be topical and of-the-moment, but not pegged to the day's news. We aspire to convey the contradictions, sorrows, and comedies of the contemporary moment, to write the present in order to create a future." They publish essays, reporting, and poetry.
Lighthouse Poem
By Eva Tortora
Lighthouse shows me the way home
Shines bright on me how much I've grown
Can see you all through waves and motion
Makes me feel like life is in forward motion
So where is my love, he's out to sea
I wait by lighthouse in hope and reverie
I have faith that you'll return home again
My light, my shadow, my angel my friend
So all this will work out I'm sure
With an ocean of worlds and an ocean of words
Pina colada and chocolate by the sea
Hope to find my friend sitting by me
I'll follow Lighthouse, I'll follow stars
Bright and bold wherever you are
I promise to return in great health
Sometimes friendship is the greatest form of wealth.
First published in the newsletter of the National Lighthouse Museum in Staten Island, NY
Largehearted Boy
Founded in 2002, David Gutkowski's literary blog explores the intersection of books and music. Features include Book Notes, which has authors create a mixtape relating to their latest book; Note Books, where musicians explore their literary side, Soundtracked, where directors and composers discuss their films' soundtracks; and "The Largehearted Boy Cross-Cultural Media Exchange Program," where authors interview musicians (and vice-versa).
Because Everything Here is a Brightness
By John Sibley Williams
In this version, the sky smuggles stars
over a horizon's barbed border without
a single shot fired. & someone is always
emptying our cages of their children.
Another folds into pollen into comb
into a sweetness that carries no sting.
& because we were given so much at first,
it's okay when a little is taken back.
When running half-naked in the backyard,
my daughters don't ask why the world
will soon shield its eyes from their bodies.
Or stare, longingly. Or touch. Or worse.
The country their great-grandparents fled
& the country that interned them & today
the way our neighbors spit their venom
cannot, in this lullabied version, take root
under our skin. Swell. Redden. No, this
vibrant sidewalk chalk doesn't mean someone's fallen.
Yes, our fields will forever refuse to age into cemeteries. I
promise these doors we're drawing on your bedroom wall
will swing & stay open. Widely. Wildly. & my
hesitant, half-broken hands will always ache toward light.
Because of your light. Because this sky. Because
everything here is a brightness. & the stars singeing your palms,
I pray will never heal.
The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database
Split This Rock, an organization of progressive poets for social justice, curates this searchable database of over 600 contemporary poems by authors such as Richard Blanco, Eduardo Corral, Aracelis Girmay, and Michal 'MJ' Jones.
Tania Pryputniewicz: Author, Teacher, Tarot Muse
Poet Tania Pryputniewicz is the author of Heart's Compass Tarot. She offers critiques and online workshops that combine ekphrastic poetry, Tarot journaling, and creating visual art.
Random House Canada
Random House Canada announced in 2023 that they would be open year-round to unagented submissions of adult fiction manuscripts from authors who are LGBTQ, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous or People of Color), and other under-represented communities. Editors say, "Our hope is that this will go a small way toward removing some of the barriers that have existed for writers developing their craft outside of traditional avenues of literary exposure. In particular, our editors are looking for high quality commercial fiction in the following genres: literary, romance, speculative fiction, historical fiction, and mystery. Please note that we do not currently accept screenplays, stage plays, young adult fiction, children's fiction, or picture book queries." No strict length limits; novels are typically 70,000-100,000 words. Follow formatting guidelines on website to submit your query letter, synopsis, and opening chapters by email.
Knowing When
By Mark Fleisher
Once heartthrobs and icons
now shuffling on and off stage
often supported by a sturdy arm
of a trusted companion
Words still remembered
messages still clear
sung by voices less vibrant
Surgeries, injections
cannot mask aging faces
bearing witness to
too many years
too many drugs
too many drinks
too many nights
Why do they go on—
the crescendo of applause
the swaying of contemporaries
mouthing words
they've known for decades
standing ovations now automatic
as if part of the script
Now I approach similar days
wondering if I will know when
or will I stubbornly go on
needing an escort to where
my words will be heard
then helped to a comfortable chair
before taken home
It is said of musicians
athletes, politicians
perhaps even poets
go out while on top
Advice hard to heed when
the roar of the crowd
still rings in their ears
The Fight Journal
By John W. Evans. The Bible may say that love keeps no record of wrongs, but when love sours, every memory becomes an entry in a ledger of unpayable claims. This painfully honest chapbook depicts competing narratives and raw emotions in the wake of an unwanted divorce. When all the blame has been divided up, and everyone has switched sides as many times as possible, love's persistence and its failures are still both mysteries to be accepted rather than understood. Winner of the 2022 Rattle Chapbook Contest.
Electric Lit’s 10 Tips for Applying to Writing Residencies
In this 2023 article at Electric Literature, nonfiction writer Alex Park shares what he learned from being on a residency application committee. Pointers include: Show why you're a good fit for this community. Propose a manageable project. Explain why this is the right time in your life and your project to attend this residency.
Off the Yoga Mat
By Cheryl J. Fish. Three New York intellectuals on the cusp of their 40th birthdays fumble toward maturity as Y2K looms. Every environment in this gentle yet deep novel is fully realized—from the anarchy of the "freegans" in Tompkins Square Park, to the domestic rituals of Finnish sauna culture, and the Black community of pre-Katrina New Orleans. The protagonists' lives and loves intersect repeatedly, like complex and shifting yoga poses, hopefully leading to a bit more enlightenment by the time we reluctantly bid them goodbye.
The Wicken Bird
By Geoffrey Heptonstall
A glimpse of feathers in the reeds.
And the air carries the spring's return
where the rain tastes of the sun
when other birds are sought
from the world beyond.
An instinct conferring grace
over land and water
passing through nature's dreams
prepared for a life of flight.
The marshland melody foretells
a future watchful and winged,
an ancestral enchantment
woven in a thread of grass.
We search the sky for signs
only the clear eye can see
for the coming season
of beauty and strength in song.
In the bird world lovers are chosen
to bind desire in harmony.
All else is curious intrusion,
a cuckoo's egg of course.
Sundress Reads
Sundress Publications is a well-regarded small press that runs the Best of the Net award series. Their "Sundress Reads" review series is open year-round to submissions of small press poetry and literary prose books published in the past two years. Editors say, "We hope to champion writers whose work highlights human struggle and challenges misconceptions." Send one PDF by email and one hard copy to Sundress Academy of the Arts.
Reedsy’s 50 Best Writing Websites of 2023
Publishing-services company Reedsy names its favorite sites for the inspiration and business of writing, in this list updated in 2023. Included are sites for self-publishing guidance and services, finding agents, craft advice, industry news, and scam-busting.
Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene
Doug Holder of Ibbetson Street Press curates this blog of poetry news and reviews, focusing on the Boston area.
The Caged Guerrilla
The Caged Guerrilla is a podcast by incarcerated writer Raheem A. Rahman about prison life, urban culture, the barriers we build for ourselves in society, and the struggle to stay free in spirit. His book of poetry and reflections by the same title is available on Amazon.
95 Traditional Poetry Manuscript Presses Who Do Not Charge Reading Fees
Writers' resource site Authors Publish released this list in January 2023 of 95 traditional poetry presses (i.e. not self-publishing or hybrid) that have fee-free submission periods. Not all the presses are open to entries at any given time, so check their websites for updated rules.
Massive Bookshop
An anti-capitalist alternative to the big online booksellers, Massive Bookshop is a place to list your books for sale while supporting social justice. Instead of seeking profits, Massive Bookshop donates whatever is leftover from operating expenses to various mutual aid and community-building projects such as Decarcerate Western Mass.
Tablet Magazine’s Pride Reading List for Kids
Tablet is a Jewish magazine of politics and culture. This 2016 article by Marjorie Ingall recommends contemporary books with positive LGBTQ representation for kids, tweens, and teens. As Ingall says, "Teaching tolerance is a Jewish value. And it's never too early to read to your kids about different kinds of families and different identities, and to model why kindness is important. Everyone is created b'tzelem Elohim, in the image of God."
coLAB Arts
Based in New Jersey, coLAB Arts facilitates collaborations between artists and local communities to address issues of justice and representation. Some of their projects include #150YearsIsEnough, an exhibit of art and writing by youth in the criminal justice system; Banished, an oral history project documenting the harms of the sex offender registry; and Trueselves, a documentary theater series that shares the stories of NJ's transgender community.
Poetry Bulletin’s Submission Fee Support Circle
Poetry Bulletin is a literary opportunities newsletter curated by poet and essayist Emily Stoddard. Their Submission Fee Support Circle offers funding to help under-represented and under-resourced authors enter contests for book and chapbook manuscripts. Limit of three submissions per poet. If you'd like to donate to support this project, please contact them.
Ink & Peat Podcast
Ink & Peat is a podcast "for enthusiasts of the written word," hosted by Craig Stewart and Barb Robitaille. They interview authors, editors, publishers, ghostwriters, and others in the self-publishing and indie book world about their writing and marketing strategies.
Picking the Right Email Platform for Your Indie Newsletter
This December 2022 article at the tech website Inbox Collective compares six of the most popular email service providers (ESPs) for your writer's newsletter: AWeber, Beehiiv, ConvertKit, Ghost, Mailchimp, and Substack. Factors to consider include whether your newsletter is a stand-alone or points readers to a site with additional content; how many emails you can send out for free; the way that you plan to monetize the newsletter, e.g. subscriptions or ads; and how much you want to customize the design.
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.
Dr. Mardy’s Dictionary of Metaphorical Quotations
This alphabetized online compendium of nearly 50,000 quotations on 2,500 topics is the work of Dr. Mardy Grothe, author of literary reference books on metaphors, oxymorons, and other rhetorical devices.
Broken Sleep Books
Broken Sleep Books is a small literary press in Wales that publishes poetry and nonfiction chapbooks ("pamphlets" in UK parlance) and full-length poetry collections. See website for their submission windows for each genre. Editors say, "We particularly wish to encourage more working-class writers, LGBTQ+, and BAME writers to submit. Politically we are left-leaning." Authors in their catalog include Angela Cleland, Pádraig ó Tuama, and U.G. Világos.
Action, Spectacle
Action, Spectacle is a biannual online journal publishing art, comics, commentary, fiction, interviews, memoir, music, poetry, and reportage. Editors say, "The magazine exists at the intersection of the socio-political, the cultural, and the arts. We seek both debut and established writers and thinkers creating intriguing and original work, whether relatively conventional or extremely experimental, and we don't shy away from the idea of a text that might be 'difficult.'" Submissions are accepted year-round. Authors published in the journal include Anne Carson, Brandon Taylor, Douglas Kearney, and TC Tolbert.
Literature-Map
Literature-Map is a project of Gnod, the Global Network of Discovery. Type in a favorite author's name to generate a cluster of other authors with a similar fan base. The more people like an author and another author, the closer together these two authors will move on the Literature-Map. It's a fun way to find additional books to read in your favorite sub-genre.
Rattle Poetry Book Reviews
As of 2022, the widely distributed journal Rattle: Poetry for the 21st Century is open to insightful and entertaining reviews of contemporary poetry books for their monthly online column. Reviews should be at least 1,000 words and include actual analysis of the text. Accepted authors will receive $200.
Spoonie Magazine
Spoonie Magazine was a weekly webzine that published creative writing and artwork by authors with physical or mental disabilities, neurodivergence, or chronic illness. There was also an annual print edition, Spoonie Journal.
Eggplant Tears
Eggplant Tears is a webzine for creative writing and artwork by the transmasculine community, broadly understood to include trans men, butches, and other gender-variant masculine folks. See guidelines page for issue themes and deadlines. They are especially open to thoughtful and nonjudgmental explorations of how queerness intersects with sexuality, sex work, and trauma.
Rocks in the River
By John Ollom. Part artists' self-help guide, part memoir of overcoming attachment wounds from his homophobic and alcoholic family, Rocks in the River is an invitation to enjoy our own creative powers without self-judgment or comparison to others. As a classically trained dancer and then an innovative choreographer, Ollom understands how the rate of a movement affects the emotions it manifests. He encourages readers not to push ourselves in a punishing way, either to heal or to make "better" art, whatever that means. Instead, we can explore towards the next stepping-stone, and the next after that, with curiosity and patience. The book is illustrated with his intuitive drawings that express the flow of pain and joy within the healing body/mind.
Taco Bell Quarterly
Not affiliated with the eponymous fast-food chain, this quirky online journal founded by MM Carrigan publishes poetry, fiction, essays, artwork, and comics. Every piece must reference Taco Bell in some way. Editors say, "First and foremost, TBQ is about great writing. It’s about provoking and existing among the white noise of capitalism. We embrace the spectrum of trash to brilliance."
The BitterSweet Review
Launched in London in 2022, The BitterSweet Review is a publishing platform dedicated to the advancement of queer literature and visual culture. In addition to the biannual literary journal, which is published in print and online, they offer workshops and limited-edition artwork for sale.
Travesties: A Queer Journal of Uncanny Arts
Travesties is an online literary journal for LGBTQ authors, publishing poetry and art that is "queer in all senses of the word". Texts are paired with spooky pink illustrations for a magical and macabre vibe. Editors say, "We want pieces that are bizarre and bountiful, that have striking imagery and delicious sound." Unpublished work preferred but not required. Send 1-5 poems or up to 10 pieces of artwork.
After You Self-Medicate with Roethke’s “The Waking” Read by Text-to-Speech App
By Roberta Beary
You're in one of your weepy moods and your mother turns her sea green eyes and lifts your baby from your arms and says did you ever notice her little heart shaped face so like yours and you say no but now that you mention it and you smile as your mother hands you back your baby who opens to your breast and afterwards watches you with milk drunk eyes half closed as you unlatch and when you turn your mother is gone and the baby is sleeping so you lay her on the lighthouse quilt while you answer the doorbell and sign for yet another package and your mother is somewhere you can't see no matter how many corners you scan as you lift the lighthouse quilt and what falls away is always and is near and the baby you hold looks nothing like your baby well maybe a little in the curve of her mouth or the way one eye is slightly higher than the other or perhaps it is the heart shape of the tiny face that is somewhat familiar in her dress of yellow polka dots and just then your daughter asks you for her baby and what falls away is always and is near and you lift the baby who watches you with milk drunk eyes half closed and as you lay her in your daughter's arms the lighthouse quilt slips to the floor and the doorbell rings you sign for yet another package you tell yourself the ache is for that long ago stray your mother brought home how he followed your every forbidden step and you feel yourself get weepy in a way your daughter never does not even when your mother died but she did a lovely job with the memorial photos that one of the three of you in matching yellow polka dots and what falls away is always and is near and you do your timed breathing standing at the window where the magnolia petals brush the rain or is it the other way around which is something your mother would know and you tell yourself that when people say weave the unspoken words into a letter to read at the graveside they don't know what the hell they're talking about and the magnolia unfurls its petals as the rain sings a lullaby you once knew but now is a fragment of bees buzzing over the figs that have fallen as you lay in the shade of your mother's yellow polka dots while you wait for her to say something momentous but she only asks for her reading glasses and the two nurses erase her name from the whiteboard and you go back to your timed breathing until your daughter says would you mind holding the baby and her sea green eyes look weepy like a memory tucked inside your pocket and you lift the baby from your daughter's arms and as the lighthouse quilt slips the baby unfurls her fists and smiles a crescent moon and you say did you ever notice the baby's little heart shaped face so like yours and your daughter says no but now that you mention it and you hear your mother calling from inside your other pocket and what falls away is always and is near.
[This poem was a co-winner of the 2022 Bridport Prize and was published in their anthology.]
Turkey City Lexicon
Critters Writers Workshop, a writing resource for sci-fi, fantasy, and horror authors, offers this primer for SF workshops to identify and avoid bad prose habits. Types of problems are listed somewhat randomly, with amusing titles like "Squid in the Mouth" (inside jokes that readers won't understand), "Fuzz" (using the word "somehow" to gloss over plot holes), or "The Jar of Tang" (an entire story contrived solely to reveal a twist).
Everything Is Going to Be OK
By Dani Jones. This funny, inspirational webcomic, now collected in book form, addresses relatable issues such as mental health, coming out, artist's block, and keeping faith during tough times. Reminiscent of Zen Pencils, the style is cozy yet profound, like a conversation about the meaning of life that ends with a hug from a friend.
Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness
By Da'Shaun Harrison. This concise book combines groundbreaking theory with clear and accessible writing. Harrison surveys and ties together the myriad ways that beauty, health, and human-ness itself have been defined to exclude and shrink the Black body, with special attention to the experiences of fat Black men and trans masculine people.
The Mountain in the Sea
By Ray Nayler. This compelling hard-science thriller is set in a reshaped geopolitical environment, where humankind's aggressive harvesting of the oceans for protein may have put evolutionary pressure on octopuses to develop a civilization of comparable intelligence as ours. But rather than pitting humans against nature, the multi-layered and well-researched plot comes down to two theories of consciousness: the colonialist quest for knowledge-as-control, or empathy across the mysterious divide of self from other. The stakes are nothing less than human survival on the planet.
