Resources
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Alien Pub
Founded in 2018, Alien Pub is an online literary and art journal edited by Queen's University (Ontario) students, with a special interest in politically transformative work. Submissions are open year-round via email. Editors say, "Alien Pub is an independent space for creative activism and transgressive media. We look for work that includes themes of justice, resistance, identity, and autonomy. We want to celebrate voices of those who have been and continue to be marginalized, and make their stories front and centre. We want work that subverts social norms and challenges existing power structures. Experiment with us; push every creative boundary you can imagine." They describe themselves further as "trans-positive and anti-oppressive."
All the Heat We Could Carry
This masterful, heart-wrenching collection by Charlie Bondhus, winner of the 2013 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award, brings the poetry of gay male love and the poetry of war together with unprecedented candor, but the story this book tells is more elegiac than celebratory of civil rights victories. The alternating narrators, a veteran of the Afghanistan war and his homefront lover, seem free from their forerunners' self-conscious anguish about sexual orientation. They can admit openly how sex between men is like martial arts grappling, how killing can be orgasmic and the camaraderie of soldiers more intimate than lovers. However, the unbridgeable rift of combat trauma still forces them apart.
All This Could Be Yours
By Jami Attenberg. This novel about the last day in the life of a corrupt real estate developer in New Orleans is an insightful, morbidly funny story about how tragic choices reverberate through the generations. One could call it a Jewish version of "The Sopranos", but where that show was cynical and bleak, this book is full of compassion and even a kind of poetic justice at the end.
Alliance of Artists Communities
Visit their site to find a writing retreat near you, and to learn about great new work being created around the world.
Alliance of Independent Authors: Ultimate Guide to Winning Book Awards
This 2021 post on the Alliance of Independent Authors website offers detailed advice on finding worthwhile contests for your indie or self-published book, including an interview with Winning Writers editor Annie Mydla, a screener for our North Street Book Prize.
Allison Amend’s Instructions for a Do-It-Yourself Book Tour
In this article from the Glimmer Train website, literary fiction author Allison Amend shares road-tested practical advice for small press authors. Amend's IPPY Award-winning debut short story collection, 'Things That Pass for Love', was published in October 2008 by OV/Dzanc Books, and her novel, 'Stations West', is due out from Louisiana State University Press's Yellow Shoe Fiction Series.
Allpoetry.com
Friendly amateur poetry forum allows authors to comment on each other's work, advertise their websites and host contests on their pages. Basic membership is free. For an additional $4.95, you can add graphics to your poem. Most useful for beginning writers. Some of the featured poems on the homepage are quite entertaining.
Almond Press Writing Competitions Event Calendar
Launched in 2012, Almond Press is a Scottish small press that publishes short story collections and sponsors literary contests. This curated submissions calendar on their website lists numerous writing contests, free and fee-charging, for English-language writers in the UK and internationally.
Amanda Auchter
Richly textured, passionate poems on birth, loss and discovery from the editor of the Pebble Lake Review. Visit her Twitter for news of publications and readings.
Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing
This free service allows you to self-publish your books in Amazon's popular e-reader format. Books self-published through KDP can participate in the 70% royalty program and are available for purchase on Kindle devices and Kindle apps for iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, PC, Mac, Blackberry, and Android-based devices. With KDP, you can self-publish books in English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian and specify pricing in US Dollars, Pounds Sterling, and Euros.
Amazon’s Magazine Store
"The Magazine Subscription Manager gives you complete control of your magazine subscriptions online. You can change your address, cancel for a pro-rated refund, report a problem to the publisher, send a gift notification, and keep track of your expiration dates. Amazon makes managing all of your magazine subscriptions easy. You can also use the Magazine Subscription Manager to manage magazines that you didn't purchase on Amazon. Just go to Magazine Subscription Manager and click on 'add a new magazine' to start the process."
Ambisinistrous
By Berwyn Moore
What should have been a romantic ruse,
a seductive scheme, the simple shearing
of your harmless hair, has us both confused,
your neck nicked and bleeding, me fearing
infection, your wrath, or worse—our passion
sapped by the danger of my clumsy love.
You gasp, then grin, though your face is ashen
as I rush to dab, to press the gauze, to prove
my slip, just that, a slip—not sinister.
If love must leave its mark, then red is fine.
Let it bloom and blaze, let it glow and glister.
My blunder—pure intent—to us a sign
of things to come: at every slip of tongue
or knife, resist the urge to come undone.
First published in Measure: A Review of Poetry, Vol. X, Issue 2
Amends
By Eve Tushnet. This debut novel by a popular blogger on Catholic sexual ethics combines brilliant satire, heartbreak, and hope. A half-dozen alcoholics from all walks of life are selected for a reality-TV show set in a residential rehab clinic. When healing and repentance become co-opted into the postmodern performance of the "self", is transformative grace still possible? Sometimes, incredibly, it is, but not always, and not in a fashion that anyone associated with the show could control or predict.
American Association of Community Theatre
AACT's website includes drama contest listings, directories of theatre programs in various US regions, articles about theatre, and rights management resources.
American Diary Project
The American Diary Project accepts old diaries and journals from ordinary Americans and their descendants, so that their stories will not be lost. The diaries are catalogued and preserved following Library of Congress archiving methods. The American Diary Project is in the process of digitizing their collection, most of which will be free for the public to access. For writers, this archive can be useful in researching the material culture of a period, social attitudes, and speech patterns.
American Life in Poetry
Weekly column by former US poet laureate Ted Kooser presents contemporary American poems and a short discussion of the techniques that make them effective. This series is designed to be reprinted for free by newspapers and online periodicals (with attribution), in order to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. You may also sign up for free weekly emails. Sponsored by The Poetry Foundation and the Library of Congress.
American Literary Translators Association
ALTA is a nonprofit arts organization located in Tuscon, AZ. It sponsors the prestigious National Translation Award.
American Literary Translators Association: Awards
The American Literary Translators Association awards five major prizes at its annual conference: the National Translation Award in Poetry and Prose, for an exceptional book of translated literature published within the previous year; the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize, for an outstanding work of Asian literature published within the previous year; the Italian Prose in Translation Award (IPTA), for an exceptional work of Italian prose in English translation; and the Cliff Becker Book Prize, for an unpublished book-length manuscript of poetry in translation. They also offer the ALTA Travel Fellowships for emerging translators to attend the annual conference, including the Peter K. Jansen Memorial Travel Fellowship.
American Literature
American Literature is a free online archive with the complete text of hundreds of classic public-domain short stories, poems, and novels for adults and children. There are also study guides and writing exercises for young readers.
American Prison Writing Archive
Founded by writer Doran Larson, the American Prison Writing Archive is a free online archive of personal essays submitted by currently and formerly incarcerated people, correctional officers, and prison staffers. The project grew out of an anthology of prison writing that Larson edited, Fourth City: Essays From the Prison in America (Michigan State University Press, 2014). In a 2018 interview in Poets & Writers Magazine, he called the APWA a "virtual meeting place" to "spread the voices of unheard populations."
American Translators Association
ATA's primary goals include fostering and supporting the professional development of translators and interpreters and promoting the translation and interpreting professions.
American Writers Museum: Literary Links
Based in Chicago, the American Writers Museum hosts exhibits and events to educate the public about great American writers, foster a love of literature, and mentor young writers. Their resources page features links to many reputable contests, book festivals, and literary societies.
Amorak Huey on Writing Funny
In this essay on the blog of Sundress Publications, an innovative small press, poet and writing teacher Amorak Huey surveys the work of some contemporary poets who use humor effectively, and reflects on the overlap between these genres. "Humor and poetry both rely on verbal surprise, the pairing of the unexpected. Humor in poetry works best when it's juxtaposed against some other mode: anger, insight, sadness, tenderness. Poetry happens when a poet presses up against the limits of language when it comes to capturing the human condition. Poetry is utterance, is act, is disruption, is the reaching for that which is understood but previously unarticulated. Humor is these things as well...Humor, like poetry, is how we cope with the fact of our aloneness in this world."
An ABC of Translating Poetry, an essay by Willis Barnstone
Master poet Willis Barnstone explores the act of translation, "a friendship between poets...a mystical union between them based on love and art. As in ordinary religious mysticism, the problem of ineffability exists: how do you find words to say the unsayable?" Barnstone singles out for praise the translations of Mary Herbert, Hölderlin, Pasternak, Rilke, Valéry, Lowell, Moore, Pound, Quasimodo, and Bishop.
An Episode of Grace
By Linda McCullough Moore. Grace abounds, though sentimentality may be skewered, in these sparkling stories about women taking stock of their flawed relationships with husbands and families—and often finding a surprising bit of information that shifts their longstanding narrative of their lives. A self-lacerating quip or satirical observation of human nature will be followed by a moment of raw loneliness or unexpected kindness that turns the reader's laughter to tears and back again.
An Honest Answer by Ginger Andrews, reviewed by Dr. Joseph S. Salemi
Poet and classical scholar Joseph Salemi (see bio and poems) probes the limitations of contemporary free- verse confessional poetry.
An Incomplete Guide to POD Publishers
Clea Saal at Books & Tales has compiled this easy-to-read comparison chart of the prices and terms of a variety of print-on-demand publishing companies.
An Incomplete History of Slam
"For us in Chicago, there's the happy memory and joy that our child, our visceral, cranky, energetic and conscious hometown poetry, has taken a life of its own in the whole of the world."
Anatomy of a Poetry Contest
See how a judge weighs poems in this essay by Virgil Suarez. Mr. Suarez, an accomplished poet in his own right, has judged over a dozen contests. "It keeps me in touch with the poetry that is being written at the moment.... Nothing better to keep the blood pumping."
ancestral vibes
By Deborah LeFalle
(after Lucille Clifton's "africa")
when i hear rhythms from home
joy wells up in my blood and oh
i say "take me there," home
where ancestors trod the
earth, and from the depths of my soul
i am energized by drumbeats of
the continent—my people, your
people, treasure of variety
wellspring where all
humanity began, mothers and fathers of
our existence, homage is theirs, and as my
body's spirited bones
move in syncopation i remember
Ancient Love
By Charlotte Mandel
Greek archaeologists find couple locked in millennia-old hug
Why disturb bones that lay in close embrace
six thousand years? Age twenty when they died,
strong limbs entwined, glow of youth in each face.
Might this have been a double suicide?
Intense passion blocked by society,
choosing hemlock that she may be his bride.
Or did some cataclysmic irony
befall them as they kissed—a volcano's
hiss and roar, as in Pompeii, a fiery
mass, or an earthquake avalanche of loam?
Were they aware of oncoming burial
or orgasmic peace in sudden catacomb?
Did they live their lives in material
comfort—not likely for they wore no gold.
Diggers uncovered no sartorial
clues, no Neolithic hoes, stone axe, household
chisels, pots. Remains hidden in a cave
suggest secrecy, illicit love, not told
to anyone in the village but saved
within pulsing vessels feeding the heart.
Did they long for afterlife, to engrave
their souls as each other's, love's martyrs?
Blanket these bones, let them not be parted.
And Still the Music
In this prizewinning poetry chapbook from Flume Press, the author speaks on behalf of "Eve and Persephone and all/ those other wayward girls" who bravely danced through a dangerous world. Even painful anecdotes brim with a life force conveyed by Townsend's love of sensory details. Book design is above-average with glossy paper and French flaps.
And While the Beast Was on the Prowl
And while the beast was on the prowl I read you
dear Andrew with a tumor in my face
with winter just outside the door and ice
gripping the heart: will I ever recapture
youth's immortality?
And you came
with your beloved hills
to which in fury and terror
in delay and inertia
you led your years
of which you begged to be
pardoned, to care and not to care:
riotous fullness, avarice
and your hills right before me
stretched the arid, pure death
to a fiery point so that
paucity and hatred did not sway me
nor the malignant gnomes
golems and tarots and the clown the jerk
the King of Oil the King of Thuribles
the paladins the crescent holy wars
What joy your Hermes tongue
that thwacked all other lights
uncouth and mediocre
of a small world in heat
your realm of ferns and vineyards
for which I whirl, a top
driven by gypsy music
your childlike voice your calm
whispering your nostalgia
for grasses and oaks clamorous
with birds and winds, with strong
aromas, dead at last
all boring melodramas
now silence germinates
for the other hand of man
not the one of the pontiffs
always jilting our songs
no, but your blue-haired town
within its ring of walls
that foil the enemy's thrust
your presence in all things
icosahedral eye
that says to grim nightmares
one more day one more day
we fooled the dragon's fangs
and now the unbridled happiness
of starving children soon
to be fed the eerie trumpet
flourishing over mountains....
Author's note: Andrew is astonishing Italian poet Andrea Zanzotto, born in Veneto, Northern Italy. Holy wars is ironic: the wars waged today between Muslims and the rest of the world.
Copyright 2009 by Ned Condini
Critique by Jendi Reiter
Ned Condini's poem "And While the Beast Was on the Prowl" is both an intimate address to a mentor, and an ambitious meditation on salvaging humane values in a time of violent fanaticism. The personal element helps the reader engage with a topic, the so-called "clash of civilizations", that often remains at the level of mere polemics and theorizing.
Condini's style and theme here remind me of the high-Modernist aesthetic epitomized by T.S. Eliot. The phrase "to care and not to care" and the medieval imagery hark back to Eliot's "Ash Wednesday"; the Eliot who wrote "these fragments I have shored against my ruins" in "The Waste Land" would have recognized Condini's concern that European civilization was crumbling under assault from barbarism and greed.
I chose this poem because I was moved by the beauty and intensity of the darkly mythical imagery Condini uses to dramatize this political conflict. At the same time, however, I felt that the poem had levels of meaning I couldn't grasp because I didn't recognize all the allusions in it. The later-added Author's Note (above) provided a key, but I would like to see more of this information woven into the poem itself, perhaps through a revised title or epigraph. I was distracted at the outset by the question "Who is Andrew?" and I think it would be more effective to signal his identity and literary prominence at the beginning instead of making the reader wait for the footnote.
A writer takes a risk in addressing his poem to a personage whom his readers may not recognize. In judging the War Poetry Contest, I more frequently run into the opposite problem of "borrowed thunder": a Wilfred Owen quote, for instance, does so much to conjure up the culture of the World War I soldier-poets that the author can neglect her obligation to create an independently compelling scene. Here, because Andrea Zanzotto may not be widely known outside Italy, Condini has a fresher story to tell, but this also means that he must work harder to demonstrate Zanzotto's relevance to the narrative, lest the allusion remain at the level of an in-joke.
Even not knowing Zanzotto's work (a deficit I now hope to correct), I got a sense of him in this poem as a man who loves beauty and loves the homeland that inspired his art. The elder poet provides a model for aging without despair. The narrator turns to him, the companion of his imagination, for hope when he feels besieged.
The beast, the forces of death and decay, first attack the narrator on a personal level: "with a tumor in my face/with winter just outside the door". I heard echoes here of the phrase "wolf at the door", often used as a metaphor for starvation. This association led me to picture a poor family hiding from marauding soldiers, as, for example, the Jews hid from the Cossacks during the Eastern European pogroms.
A leap, perhaps, but in keeping with the theme that Condini goes on to develop, namely the ironically named "holy wars" that are ravaging the precious "small world[s]" of "ferns and vineyards". The vineyard, in the Old Testament, is a powerful symbol of the coming reign of God, when even the humblest household will have the means to flourish in peace. (See, e.g., 1 Kings 4:25, "During Solomon's lifetime Judah and Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, lived in safety, each man under his own vine and fig tree.")
In Condini's poem, it is less clear that God is a liberating force, by whatever name God is called. "[T]he paladins the crescent holy wars" suggests Muslim fundamentalism, but the sardonic references to "golems and tarots and the clown the jerk/the King of Oil the King of Thuribles" seem to skewer Western authorities of church and state nearly as much. I guessed "the King of Oil" to be former US President George W. Bush, who also at times framed the Middle East conflict in terms of a Christian crusade. A thurible is an incense-burner on a chain, which a priest swings during a church procession. Incense being most commonly associated with Catholic and high-church Anglican worship, rather than Bush's evangelicalism, could the "King of Thuribles" be Pope Benedict XVI—no stranger to provocative statements against Islam? This connection is strengthened by the later negative reference to "the pontiffs/always jilting our songs".
Whether one matches these figures up to real-life personages or understands them on a symbolic level, Condini appears to conclude that real salvation resides outside the power structure, with the trickster-poet whose "Hermes tongue...thwacked all other lights". I love the vernacular snap of that word "thwacked," upsetting the pretensions of these "Kings" with its sudden dash of comedy. Victory lies in the small moments of beauty and grace that persist despite the seemingly more powerful forces arrayed against them: "one more day one more day/we fooled the dragon's fangs". It is in the poet's love for his particular patch of ground, in contrast to the ideologues who would sacrifice the land and its people for an abstraction, a kingdom of martyrs in the clouds.
There are a few places in this poem where I would suggest some clarifications. Addressing Zanzotto, the narrator alludes to some inner struggle whose significance is unclear: "your beloved hills/to which in fury and terror/in delay and inertia/you led your years". Did the elder poet need to repent of some period of anger and violence that preceded his current humane wisdom? How does that relate to the poem's political theme? (According to the sketchy biography on Wikipedia, he came from an anti-fascist family, so the obvious guess is out.)
I liked the originality of "blue-haired town" but, on reflection, couldn't quite picture what it meant. The first image I get from "blue-haired" is a certain kind of old lady with a fake-looking dye job. This seems too suburban and pretentious for Zanzotto's earthy Italian village. Is he referring to mossy slate roofs, or bluish foliage? Do blue spruce grow in Italy?
Finally, in the penultimate line, I would put either a line break or a dash between "soon to be fed" and "the eerie trumpet". It might also work to end the poem at "dragon's fangs", since the concluding images are not the most original, and ending with the dragon brings the poem full circle, back to the beast—prowling still, but held at bay, for now.
(Purchase Ned Condini's new book, An Anthology of Modern Italian Poetry, from the Modern Language Association here.)
Where could a poem like "And While the Beast Was on the Prowl" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Aesthetica Magazine's Annual Creative Works Competition
Entries must be received by August 31
Prizes of 1000 pounds for unpublished poems and stories from a British magazine that explores the interactions among different artistic genres and their cultural context; enter online
Robert Watson Literary Prizes
Postmark Deadline: September 15
Free contest from the prestigious Greensboro Review offers prizes of $500 for unpublished poetry and short fiction; no simultaneous submissions
Hackney Literary Awards for Poetry & Short Fiction
Postmark Deadline: November 30 (don't enter before September 1)
Offers prizes up to $600 for unpublished poetry and stories, in both nationwide and statewide (Alabama) categories; publication not included
This poem and critique appeared in the August 2009 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Andrea Hurst & Associates Literary Management
This literary agency generously shares a wealth of industry information with the public. Literary agent Andrea Hurst's website features weekly interviews with publishing industry professionals, advice on book marketing, and manuscript consultations.
Anglican Theological Review
No simultaneous submissions. Poetry editor is prizewinning author Sofia M. Starnes.
Anna K. Scotti
Anna Scotti is a poet, writer, teacher, and public speaker living in Southern California. Her work has been awarded prizes by numerous literary magazines including Chautauqua, Compass Rose, The Comstock Review, and Crab Creek Review. In 2015, Nikky Finney selected Anna's poem "Tanager" for the Pocataligo Prize (Yemassee), and Aimee Liu chose Anna's story "They Look Like Angels" for the Orlando Prize for Short Fiction (AROHO). Anna is working on a collection of poems which will include her award-winning poem from the 2010 War Poetry Contest, "This Is How I'll Tell It When I Tell It to Our Children". She earned an MFA from Antioch University in 2007. Visit her website.
Anne Boleyn
Alone
Standing at the palace window, scowling
Henry waits for news
Hidden from the sight of all
Who'd sneer and cheer the whore's death
The witch must die!
What courage, dignity she doth show
Her last walk slow across the green
Fat bumble bees drone, ravens caw, and peck the grass
A dragonfly flutters still-moist wings in warm air
Spectators talk in whispers, wait
Assembled 'round the scaffold
Its macabre trappings; the block
What say you, now, Anne?
Lost your tongue?
Ah! Mind not—soon 'twill be your head
Masked executioner from France
By God!
Sword not axe
Henry harkened her plea
Mercy prevailed
Muffled drumbeats match her footsteps
Close to scaffold she pauses,
Head held high, dark eyes fearful
With trembling hands
She clutches rosary close to breast
He waits for news
Oh! Anne, my Queen, he sighs
I loved you so
With discontent you plagued
Belaboured me
Your King
He conjured up an image of her face
No beauty this
Bold, small eyes, a mouth too wide
Parchment pale skin
No lowered eyes or gentle ways
A sly, sloe-eyed, mocking smile
So insolent—So arrogant
Mounts steps to platform, resolute and proud
Refuses kerchief binding for her eyes
Her long gown scatters straw
Across the wooden boards
Kneels close to block
In prayer
His face grows red
She shamed him much at Court
Sour bile of rage within him burns
As thoughts of whisperings 'bout wanton ways
Assail his seething mind
Blinded to the gardens, hedges, lawns
His blue eyes streak, like arrow leaving bow
Search beyond the line of mighty oaks
To Tower Bridge
And on to where the dingy, gloomy, old stone walls
Of London Tower wait
Suddenly, is heard the sonorous toll of bell;
St Peter ad Vincula
She hears soft footfalls from behind
The executioner draws close
Affright, she maunders
My neck is small; one rapid stroke will serve
To please My Lord, the King
He nods impatiently, and raises sword
That glints
In noonday sun
The great bell's tolling cease
Unable to contain his rage
His eyes alight with fire
Hal roars,
Madam,
You dared to cuckold me! Your King
As if in answer sound of cannon, loud and clear
Angrily roars back
Copyright 2007 by Babs Halton
Critique by Jendi Reiter
In this month's critique poem, "Anne Boleyn", Babs Halton sets herself the task of restoring dramatic tension to a story whose outcome and characters are well-known. She achieves this by zeroing in on the personal emotions and sensations of the characters in the present moment, allowing the reader's imagination to fill in the familiar historical context.
Most of us who know British history carry in our minds the famous Holbein portraits of Henry VIII: a ruthless, sensual figure whose distance from us is reinforced not only by his sumptuous old-fashioned costume but by his aggressively regal demeanor. Such a defense against intimacy invites breaching by the creative storyteller. Halton gives us a plausible glimpse into the secret thoughts of a man who can command life and death, but not his own heart. He is human after all, as we hoped.
The poem's first line, "Alone", sums up what Halton is telling us about Henry's essential dilemma. Love (albeit a selfish, infatuated version of it) made him more vulnerable than it was safe for a king to be, or so he thought. Suspicion, pride, and violence present themselves as the path of true strength, yet in the end the cannon signaling Anne's death gets the last word, an unwelcome reminder that there are some powers even the king cannot intimidate.
Halton builds tension by having the action occur in slow-motion, focusing with painful clarity on each physical step of Anne's progress toward the block. The beauty and tranquility of nature add tragic irony: "Fat bumble bees drone, ravens caw, and peck the grass/A dragonfly flutters still-moist wings in warm air". These fine observations mimic how the mind of a person in danger can magnify small irrelevant details of her surroundings in order to avoid comprehending the main threat.
The style of the poem occupies the intriguing territory between formal and free verse, an unobtrusive way to make the poem sound natural to modern ears while retaining the flavor of the historical period. The iambic beat is strong throughout, yet the varied line lengths convince the eye that this is free verse. The short lines without end-punctuation contribute to the stream-of-consciousness sensation that brings the poem to life.
I nearly always advise writers to steer clear of thee's and thou's, and their associated verb endings, like "hath" and "doth". Hardly anyone now knows the correct way to use these constructions, and therefore they get interspersed at random in a poem primarily written in modern English. Halton's single "doth" is a minor speed-bump in the flow of the poem, but the problem is worth noting because haphazard thee-thou usage derails so many emerging writers.
Her other old-fashioned phrases worked more naturally as approximations of how the characters would think and speak: "Affright, she maunders..." or "Whisperings 'bout wanton ways". Too much of this sort of language can seem precious, so it is a technique to use sparingly, as Halton has done here.
I found this sequence particularly striking: "Blinded to the gardens, hedges, lawns/His blue eyes streak, like arrow leaving bow/Search beyond the line of mighty oaks/To Tower Bridge". The visual is so important in this poem because all communication between the two main characters must now be indirect: internal monologue, recollected conversation, or clues to the other's actions inferred from surrounding sights and sounds. This may be why, as I entered into the events of the poem, it felt like they were unfolding in an unnatural silence, even though there are sounds mentioned throughout. The only directly observed conversation is Anne's last words to the executioner, and this is a one-sided exchange because he only replies with a silent nod. Is she really even speaking to him, or is he just another indirect vehicle for her final effort to reach out to Henry? "My neck is small; one rapid stroke will serve/To please My Lord, the King". Her thoughts turn toward him, inescapably, as his toward her, yet they cannot cross the gulf between them.
Admirers of this poem may enjoy Maxwell Anderson's verse-dramas "Elizabeth the Queen" (1930) and "Anne of the Thousand Days" (1948).
Where could a poem like "Anne Boleyn" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Wigtown Poetry Prize
Entries must be received by January 25
Prizes up to 1,500 pounds for unpublished poems, plus award ceremony in Wigtown, "Scotland's National Book Town"; no simultaneous submissions
Fish International Poetry Prize
Entries must be received by March 31; don't enter before January 1
Irish independent publisher offers prizes up to 1,000 euros and reading at West Cork literary festival in this contest for unpublished poems; online entry only
This poem and critique appeared in the December 2007 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Anne R. Allen’s Blog…with Ruth Harris
Comic mystery writer Anne R. Allen publishes weekly posts about publishing and marketing your books in the digital age. Guest columnist Ruth Harris is a New York Times bestselling author and former Big Six editor who contributes a post each month. Popular posts include "Top Ten Questions from New Writers", "Top 10 Self-Sabotaging Mistakes of Author-Bloggers", and "12 Signs Your Novel Isn't Ready to Publish".
Another Word for Sky Is Upside-Down-Understory
By Lynn Schmeidler
Sheena Queen of the Jungle I get you
you don't know how to act around men
but you can throw a bamboo spear like nobody ever orphaned you.
O lady of the jungle I ranked you 99th in 100 Sexiest Females
of All Time
and like you I prefer to be alone with my clench and dispossession.
I too speak with animals.
Sit your fiercely-proficient-in-knife-fighting self over here and give me something I can use.
Surprise me like you do your enemies.
What if there were someone to tell me not to pick my teeth
with arrowheads?
We heroines have to stick together in a grand but unembarrassed way
like an archipelago.
Antarctica
I
Cold! Cold! Totally cold! Colder than Alaska or Siberia.
Colder than the North Pole. Cold like my former soul
You are, oh age-old Antarctica!
Measureless and empty plains with silences as white and deep as death
Descended on me there, and frost besieged the air
From rocks of ice around Antarctica.
Dark and shapeless were the nights while somewhere deep in space, the Milky Way
Rose beaming like the dawn, but never would the sun,
And I withdrew behind Antarctica...
II
Warm...warm...lovely warm...warmer than the Congo, Spain or India...
Warmer than a bonfire has been my old desire
For always green, tropical Trinidad...
Riverbanks and stars arise despite the walls of ice I once evoked
Around Antarctica, for I am thinking of
My always green, tropical Trinidad...
Oh, there’s the warmth and love of old of starry nights in lovely Trinidad.
Royal are the palm trees, and gentle is the evening breeze
In always green, tropical Trinidad...
III
Long ago there was a time my heart was almost like Antarctica
With blizzards all about, where life was just a shout
Across a desolate Antarctica!
Cool is the light on snowy nights when I am thinking of Antarctica.
The cold is like my past and I have changed at last,
And so have you, oh cold Antarctica.
Warm is the light on starry nights when I am thinking of my Trinidad.
The warmth is in the name, and there’s a perfect flame
Around my self, my age-old Trinidad...
Copyright 2004 by Freddy Fonseca
Critique by Jendi Reiter
The majestic rhythms of this month's critique poem, "Antarctica" by Freddy Fonseca, evoke the grandeur of the two landscapes he praises. More than a mere travelogue or pastoral, the poem uses the essential features of these extreme climates to illustrate the dynamic relationship of opposing principles within the soul.
The poem's subtle yet effective formal structure relies on repetition and syllable counts. At first glance, it seems like free verse, but the subliminal perception of underlying order inspires the reader to look deeper. The first line of each stanza, though pleasantly varied in length, contains nine stressed beats and around 18 syllables. The second line uses iambic hexameter, twelve syllables with an internal rhyme (e.g. "The warmth is in the name, and there's a perfect flame").
Finally, the last line approximates iambic pentameter, always ending with the name of one of the two subjects of this ode. Points of departure from these strict meter and syllable counts (e.g. "Royal are the palm trees, and gentle is the evening breeze") give the poem some spontaneity, a nice contrast with the gravity of its tone. The recurring "Trinidad" and "Antarctica" at the end of each stanza heighten the impression of a timeless landscape, one that is more mythic than naturalistic. (For more on syllabic verse, sample the work of one of its leading modern practitioners, the acclaimed poet Marianne Moore.)
Although they don't tell us anything new (Antarctica is cold), the opening lines narrowly escape banality because of the sureness of this oracular voice. The sounds, rather than the content, carry the poem forward. The opening string of three stressed syllables ("Cold! Cold! Totally cold!") uses the same technique as the famous opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony to demand our attention. Interior rhymes and assonance (cold, totally, Pole, soul, old) resound like a tolling bell. In the second stanza, the poet confronts the haunting scene's stark beauty with an awe that is barely distinguishable from terror.
By contrast, most of the images of Trinidad are softer-focus and sentimental, without the immediacy or tightly constructed sound-patterns of the preceding section. Exception: "Riverbanks and stars arise" is a lovely, delicate image. To some extent, the lesser intensity of the second section is a relief from the inhuman majesty of Antarctica, but I think this effect could be retained while increasing the originality of the wording.
The contrast between the landscapes would not be news in itself, but acquires significance as a mirror of the speaker's inner journey. The speaker introduces both himself and the poem's setting by saying that Antarctica is "cold like my former soul." The word "former" immediately suggests the opening of a story, which we hope will be brought to closure later in the poem. This hope is only partly brought to fruition.
The Trinidad sections imply that the speaker's soul, once frozen like the polar wastes, has been thawed by the romantic hopes that always lay in its depths: "Warmer than a bonfire has been my old desire/For always green, tropical Trinidad." The word "old" suggests that both moods have long coexisted inside the speaker, but now he has allowed the warmer one to become ascendant. Formerly, he "withdrew behind Antarctica," a desolation that may have had its own unique pleasures (solitude, safety, self-dramatizing unhappiness?) but did not satisfy the part of his soul that longed for human connection.
Yet at the poem's end, the speaker is still only "thinking of my Trinidad." It is not clear that he has reached the land of fulfillment. Where is he now, thinking of both Antarctica and Trinidad but not actually in either place? Perhaps one represents the past and the other the future. In any event, the next-to-last stanza's soothing phrase "Cool is the light on snowy nights" shows that he has achieved balance between both aspects of his temperament, and can appreciate whatever sublime experiences each landscape offers. There's a maturity in this conclusion, a harmony with the past rather than a rejection of it, which somewhat compensates for the unfinished nature of the poem's journey.
Where could a poem like "Antarctica" be submitted? As I've mentioned before, many literary journals nowadays are wedded to a modernist, colloquial free-verse aesthetic. The old-fashioned romantic tone and diction of "Antarctica" would be out of place in such venues. Poets with a style like Fonseca's would do better to concentrate on publishers outside the American academic establishment, such as state poetry societies and small independent contest sponsors, especially British ones. Some upcoming contests to consider:
Poetry Society of Virginia Contests
Postmark Deadline: January 19
In addition to open-theme grand prize, several themed contests offer prizes for a variety of verse forms and topics, including poems about nature
W.B. Yeats Society Annual Poetry Competition
Postmark Deadline: February 15
Affiliated with New York City's prestigious National Arts Club
Oregon State Poetry Association Contests
Postmark Deadline: February 26
Also holds contests in August; open-theme grand prize plus smaller awards for traditional verse and other categories
Kick Start Poets Competition
Postmark Deadline: March 25
British contest offers 500 pounds, accepts various currencies; 2004 winner was formal poem
Byron Herbert Reece International Award
Postmark Deadline: April 15 (changed to October 15 in 2006)
Honors Georgia poet who celebrated his native landscape; no simultaneous submissions
In January 2006, look for the biennial Nature Poetry Competition from Friends of Acadia Journal
This poem and critique appeared in the December 2004 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Anthem for the Official Rhode Island State Shellfish
Oh beau-ti-ful, crus-ta-ceous life
A-bid-ing in our muck
Through what a bi-valve knows of strife
We wish you e-very luckkkkkkk
Tho' sed-i-ment, and kinds of silt
May blanket o'er your reign
Sow seeds of roe and mind your milt
Peee-ple your wet domainnnnnnnnnnnn
Behind your bulging azure eyes
Through your breathy mollusk sighs
A clammy ethos mild and meek
Your shell is strong but mind is weak.
When aenemone with stinging spine
Or jellyfish with limbs like twine
Should on your restful time impinge
You just contract—and close your hinge.
While quick seas rush and swell above
The lang'rous shellfish dreams of love
But below in lonely briney sand
His mussel amors meet faint demand
And Lo! his mournful wails expand
Across the Stygian marine land
To fill with rueful cry the oceans
With his forlorn longing a-balone notions
Though sun may shine in air-filled skies
In ombrageous acqueous torpor he lies
His love as great as ever seen. She
Now doth garnish cheese linguini......
Embittered neither, not to grow sick
From thoughts on fate: a clam is Stoic
Would suffer samely less nor mo' joy
Had she wound up upon a PoBoy...
On sunny beaches all palm-fretted
Natives drumming frond-envetted
Stew-pots boil with what they've netted
Clams seek not to be so feted
New England too, its sounds and shores
Abound in Yale and Harvard bores
Who deem it is a mark of stah-tus
To shew our friend their learned glottis
Still so some other humbler genus
Treat the clam in ways as heinous
See the otter on his back
Give the Quahog rocky whack
Seagulls using no stone mallet
No less seek clams to gift their palate
Even octopi, of man-like heart
Are known to prise their shells apart
But though many foreign nation
From his husk seeks his ablation
He cannot loathe he doth not hate
Regards placidly his fate
For when there are two halves of you
Whether in chowder or island stew
Seabird slurp or otter bang
The end is self-same, yin or yang
Copyright 2006 by Matthew Farrell
Critique by Jendi Reiter
It's mid-January; your driveway has been covered with ice for two months; and already your resolutions to eat less carbs and read "War and Peace" are looking like a pipe dream. Here comes Critique Corner to start off your new year on a more cheerful note with this fine example of light verse, Matthew Farrell's "Anthem for the Official Rhode Island State Shellfish". Our Wergle Flomp Poetry Contest, which spoofs vanity contests by rewarding poems so bad they're good, is currently open to submissions through April 1. A poem like Farrell's would be a strong contender. We hope this critique will enhance your understanding of some characteristics of successful humor poetry.
The central joke of Farrell's poem is, of course, the absurdity of writing an elaborate rhyming ode about a clam, yet the poem would not succeed nearly as well were it not for his inventive use of rhyme, which allows him to extend the joke over numerous verses even after we've gotten the basic idea. Pacing is important in all poetry, but especially in humorous verse. We've all sat through comedic sketches that would have been great 30-second gags but are dragged out over several repetitive minutes.
Farrell holds our interest with his rich vocabulary (our hapless hero is variously described as a mollusk, a Quahog, an abalone, a mussel, etc.) and creative elaboration of the perils that can befall a clam. Another way he keeps the joke alive is by creating a storyline, complete with a bit of philosophical wisdom at the end. Thus, the poem not only pokes fun at flowery verse in general, but at a particular old-fashioned genre, the nature poem as moralistic allegory. (See, for instance, Isaac Watts' "How Doth the Little Busy Bee", famously parodied by Lewis Carroll in 'Alice in Wonderland'.)
What makes some animals funnier than others? Physical awkwardness or repulsiveness plays a role; clams, worms and insects invite the gross-out reaction that is central to low comedy. It is also hard to anthropomorphize a clam, since they are virtually immobile and probably lack a complex mental life.
Making this lowly mollusk the central player in a drama of love and death, as Farrell has done, creates an amusing incongruity that is often an important ingredient of light verse. The poem becomes only superficially about the clam, and more about gently satirizing recognizable social types (the Stoic philosopher, the star-crossed lovers, the Hahvahd man with his "learned glottis") by applying their self-important rhetoric to the unlikely mollusk. We become uncomfortably aware of the poetic cliches and mannered insincerity of our conventional love-talk when we read of the clam whose "breathy mollusk sighs" and "mournful wails expand/ Across the Stygian marine land" because his lady-love now "doth garnish cheese linguini."
"Anthem" contains many delightful rhymes that depend on unexpected yet perfectly apt word choice, like the song lyrics of Noel Coward or W.S. Gilbert. Some of my favorites were "stah-tus/glottis", "seen. She/linguini", and "mo' joy/PoBoy". The last four verses flow especially smoothly, unlike some of the earlier lines where the meter is less regular. While the first two stanzas are entertaining as parody, I found them distracting overall because the rest of the poem follows a different pattern (AABB rather than ABAB rhyme, roughly four iambs per line instead of alternating four and three). I would suggest that Farrell should replace the parody lyrics with a single introductory stanza in the same form as the subsequent ones, and complete the parody as a separate poem following the structure of the original ("America the Beautiful").
Even more than serious poetry, light verse often benefits from rhyme and meter. Natural-sounding poetry in contemporary language but traditional forms is much easier to find in our Wergle entry pool than among our War Contest entries, for instance. Perhaps our modern ears have become so unaccustomed to formal verse that many poets can only use its techniques ironically. Yet I also think form has a special role to play in humorous poetry. Good "bad" poetry requires a tone that is delicately balanced between sincerity and self-consciousness. The form requires the author to take the poem somewhat seriously, avoiding an excess of forced laughter at his own joke. The poem must first set up a convincing authority—in this case, the authority of poetic conventions—before it can deliver the satisfaction of undermining that authority through satire. As in Farrell's poem, the clever elaboration of the form can also do some work toward holding the reader's interest, taking the pressure off the joke to carry the poem all by itself.
Where could a poem like "Anthem" be submitted?
The dearth of significant awards for high-quality light verse is an opportunity for some enterprising publisher. Meanwhile, in addition to our Wergle Flomp contest, the following contests may be a good fit:
CNW/FFWA Florida State Writing Competition
Postmark Deadline: March 15
Top prizes of $100 for entries in poetry, fiction, nonfiction and children's literature, from Florida Freelance Writers Association
The following journals are also open to publishing light verse and satire:
Light Quarterly
The only US magazine exclusively publishing light verse, satire, cartoons, parodies, and word-play
Main Street Rag
Edgy literary journal enjoys satirical and dark-humored socially conscious poetry; accessible free verse probably preferred (think Edward Field rather than Hilaire Belloc); no simultaneous submissions
This poem and critique appeared in the January 2006 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter.
Anti-Racist Resource Guide
Education scholar and anti-racist researcher Victoria Alexander compiled this extensive list of anti-racist resources in response to the wave of police brutality against African-Americans in spring 2020. It includes links to books, documentaries, articles, activist groups, and black-owned bookstores. Whether you're an ally looking to educate yourself, an activist wanting to support protesters and black creators, or just a fan of great literature, you will find something here to enlighten and empower you.
Antigua’s Hope
By Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Sweet Potato Man sits
on the tailgate of his battered
pick-up, parked near the road
that tracks Antigua's shore
waiting for someone to pay
for his crop. Nearly black-baked
by the Carib heat as he, sweet
potatoes lie on a blanket like twists
of dark yarn.
Like a flower drawn to the sun,
Sweet Potato Man turns his face
toward traffic. Crumpled, brown
as a prune it is. Languid he is.
Waiting. His legs dangle from his perch,
limp, puppet limbs. Shoulders hunch,
sweat glints on his cheeks, his eyes
white buttons. I sense he wants
me to stop, knows
I will pass him by.
Any Holy City
Winner of the Gerald Cable Award reclaims the story of Abraham and Isaac as token of the fierce, ambivalent love of fathers for sons, and perhaps of God for man - a love that in one moment could devour its creation or die for it. Other poems take us from the American prairie to the permeable border between the worlds of the living and the dead. "This is how we came to/ love this life - / by wanting/ the next."
Apocalyptic Swing
By Gabrielle Calvocoressi. The jazzy, tough, delicious poems in this collection swing through highs and lows of sexual awakening, boxing, and religious devotion. Resilience sings through these anecdotes of bombed black churches and synagogues, down-and-out factory towns and risky love affairs, with characters who know that "all you gotta do is get up/one more time than the other guy thinks you can."
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.
Apples and Stones
By Alice Wolf Gilborn
When the river spills from its banks,
rushes down the road, it brings us gifts
from its heart—sand and rocks
and something else—
apples—shaken from laden trees,
hundreds of them, so when the water
withdraws it leaves a line of apples and stones
across all the yards on the street.
We flee from the muddy current as we
would from a snake's tongue licking
the fence lines, the grass, the arborvitae.
We return to pools and rivulets in the fields,
water in the cellar two feet deep.
The day after the flood, power is out
and people are out on the street—the fire
truck pumps basements, others dump
dirt on washed out driveways, pick up
begins. We compare damages.
Later the excavator crawls up the road
to the spot where the river boiled over,
shoves the channel back to its bed. The way
over the mountain is strewn with boulders.
But we can cross a bridge to town, leave our
mud flats, yesterday's gardens. We can stay.
Butterflies sip from sagging roses.
Claudia next door brings us a hibiscus cutting
from a bush in her yard, a pink tissuey flower
that lasts a day. Put it in water and it will grow
roots, she says. She tosses her apples into the field
for the deer. Ours just disappear.
Months later we wear an apron of sand
and stones on our grass, not as a badge
of courage or to show that we've suffered,
but as a mark of respect—
for change that lurks in every dry bed
for the fact that we can be routed again
for the truth that rivers will have their way.
Aqua Curves
Feminine archetypes get a modern reinterpretation in verses alternately playful and poignant, in this prizewinning collection whose guiding spirit is the mermaid. Winner of the 2005 Stevens Prize from the National Federation of State Poetry Societies.
Archive of Our Own
One of the first and most comprehensive sites for fan-fiction and artwork, the nonprofit Archive of Our Own ("AO3" to fans) is home to over 5 million creative works spanning 30,000+ fandoms.
Are Unconscious Biases Giving Your Book Bad Tension?
Bad tension happens when a reader develops strong questions about a book that the book doesn't answer. Page-turning energy plummets as the reader's mind tries to digest the content. Often, bad tension manifests when an author's unconscious biases surface in ways they didn't expect. This article describes the signs of bad tension and gives four techniques to transform it into productive tension and release.
Content warnings: Racism, sexism, homophobia, self-harm, the shaming and murder of a disabled person
—Annie Mydla, Managing Editor
Three hard manuscripts
I'm reading a manuscript: a mystery set in the world of construction. The main characters are white, with a female protagonist investigating the secrets and lies of the previous generation's patriarch. The inclusion of Mexican construction workers is meant to be sympathetic and progressive.
As I continue to read, though, I start realizing that the Mexican foreman was present for all of the events the protagonist is investigating.
Hold up. Why isn't the protagonist asking him anything? Why isn't anyone asking him anything? Why does the book end without anyone asking him anything? Why doesn't the book ever acknowledge that no one asked him anything? Are secrets and lies only important when white people know them?
Did the author do this on purpose?
The next manuscript I'm reading is a social drama set in southwestern Canada. The white female protagonist is trying to figure out whether she may have First Nations heritage, and the book is meant to be a respectful tribute to First Nations culture in the area.
However, I start noticing that the three main Indigenous Canadian characters are all "the most" of something: The kindest, the most intelligent, and the most evil, respectively.
Stop. Why are the white characters three-dimensional, while the Indigenous characters are one-dimensional? What does this actually demonstrate about the way the book views Indigenous Canadians? What will the author say when I point this out?
What would I be going along with if I didn't point it out?
The third manuscript I'm reading is a fictionalized memoir billed as an open-minded romp about the author's empowering experiences in the world of kink.
But as I read, I notice that the protagonist is portrayed as increasingly traumatized and numb, used by a toxic mentor in an abusive relationship she can't escape, because she believes she is a bad person who deserves sadness.
Uh-oh. Is this a book about BDSM empowerment, or kink as a form of self-harm? Is the author aware that the behavior of her character is indicative of mental illness and abuse? Why are the title, blurbs, and author all telling me it's supposed to be fun and sexy? How can a book's branding and content diverge so greatly?
Should I tell the author I disagree with her interpretation of her book's events...in other words, her own life?
I wanted to be pulled along in these narratives, but instead, I felt pulled every which way!
Understanding bad tension
Page-turning energy is a top goal in market-friendly fiction and creative nonfiction.
In virtually every book, a pattern of escalating tension and release draws readers forward to a climax. If that forward movement stalls, if the page-turning energy is interrupted, readers feel an intense discomfort that I'm calling "bad tension".
I've noticed that bad tension arises when...
- The reader's questions stem from confusion about what's happening and why: If Jose was there for all of the events that started the mystery and everyone knows it, why isn't anyone asking him about what happened?
- The book gives conflicting messages, making the reader unsure how they're supposed to feel about some of the content: The title, blurbs, and introduction say this book is supposed to be fun and sexy, but the content is about abuse and depression.
- The reader feels alienated, misrepresented, judged, or threatened by the material: It makes me feel angry to see Indigenous Canadians represented so one-dimensionally.
- The reader is not within the target audience. I'm wondering if this book would be more suited to readers who support MAGA, not a progressive like me.
Perhaps most discomfiting of all is the suspicion that my experience of the author's book is drastically different from the author's experience. A book is an intimate space! It hurts not to be on the same page as the author...even more when you're not sure what page the author is on, or why, or whether they're expecting you to be there with them.
The pain of bad tension can kill a book. Readers may not finish it. Agents and publishers don't want to touch it.
If you're thinking this doesn't apply to you, consider that bad tension isn't always about unconscious biases. It could be anything that causes readers to develop questions the author didn't intend. (As you read this article, keep in mind that all four of the strategies below can be applied to bad tension that's not bias-related.)
For example, I read a novel manuscript about the music industry that kept portraying an agent as evil for smoking, hanging out in clubs with young musicians, and trying to tempt artists away from their current agents: three things that don't strike me as particularly evil or even unusual for agents in the 1990s when the book is set. The discrepancy between my assumptions and the author's resulted in bad tension. Ouch!
With that said, when I find bad tension in a manuscript or North Street book, it most often is from a progressive author writing a progressive book who has an unconscious bias. The bad tension is caused by the juxtaposition of the well-meaning project and the biased content. That's why I'm focusing on unconscious bias in this article.
You might be wondering why I keep talking about unconscious bias. Don't we also get a lot of books with conscious bias? We certainly do. However, openly bigoted books don't raise bad tension for me, because I'm not confused about a) why the biased content is there or b) how to feel about it. (It's there because they're biased, and I'm upset!)
Another reason I'm addressing progressive writers and not openly bigoted ones is that I know progressive writers want to change. If, like many of my clients, you want more practice identifying and eliminating bad tension from unconscious bias, I hope this article can help. Most importantly, I hope to demonstrate how bad tension can be a wonderful gift for authors. It's like a gold mine for productive content. If you can find it and change it into productive content, your work will have advanced to the next level. Readers, agents, and publishers will feel the difference.
Unconscious biases
A bias is a preference for, or aversion to, something: often a person, group, identity, or idea. An unconscious bias, also called an implicit bias, is a bias you're not aware of.
Even people who strive not to be biased might still have biases they could try to overcome if they knew about them. Biases like...
White people's knowledge is more important than Mexican people's
White people are internally complex and nuanced, while Indigenous people's personalities are more simple and superlative (the most kind, the most evil)
White people grow, and Indigenous people stay the same
A story (a life?) is only worthwhile if sold as fun and sexy
Self-harm and mental illness are shameful and every effort should be made to put a positive face on them, even to oneself
When you see these biases written out in black and white, they seem obvious. Nevertheless, they weren't obvious to the authors who wrote the manuscripts.
Bias is like water under pressure: it will find its way through any crack and cranny. And just think of the nature of book-writing. It's such a personal, intense, and depth-plumbing activity that if an author has an unexamined personal bias, the question is not if, but when it will surface.
If you'd like to learn more, you can read about unconscious/implicit biases in this Georgetown module, "Bias and well-meaning people", and test yourself for biases at Harvard's Project Implicit.
You can detect bad tension
Bad tension is worth looking for, since it can lead to incredibly rich content once addressed.
You have the power to detect bad tension in your own drafts. It's like a combination of troubleshooting and mining.
Some authors are sensitive to the contradictory messages and unconscious biases that foment bad tension for readers. They focus on these things and engage with them. For others, the impulse isn't as automatic. They might have to consciously add "searching for unconscious biases" and "seeking bad tension" to their editing to-do list. That's okay. The important thing is that you want to find it and are actively looking as part of your process. As you read your draft page by page, it can help to ask things like:
Is the passage giving readers enough guidance on how to feel about these characters, situations, and themes?
Will this material leave readers with mixed messages or awkward questions?
I know how I feel about this content, but how will my target audience feel? How will it make the audience think I feel? How can I signal more clearly how I really feel and what I really think?
If part of my book feels off but I don't know why, is there an unconscious bias that distorts the storytelling?
These questions can be especially helpful when directed towards elements of race, gender, sexuality, class, level of education, neurodivergence, mental health, age, disability, and privilege. Some of the most common bias traps authors can fall into are listed in my previous article, "Exploitation versus representation".
Transforming bad tension, strategy 1: Purge the material that causes bad tension
You find bad tension. What now?
Sometimes when I point out potential bias in a critique, the author responds, "Whoops, there's no reason that needs to be there!" and takes the material out. That's probably the easiest way to deal with bad-tension-causing content. But when it comes to writing, easy isn't always best. Sometimes the hard way is better: digging in, interrogating, questioning, transforming. That's where the next three strategies come in.
Strategy 2: Literary judo—channeling reader curiosity with questions
Bad tension is when readers have uncomfortable questions the book doesn't answer, distracting them from the book's flow. Fortunately, questions are the root of both bad and good tension in a book. You can turn reader questions from distracting to productive by channeling them into the larger pattern that defines all market-friendly books: escalating tension and release.
I once critiqued a draft of a cancer memoir in which the protagonist flirts with attractive doctors, nurses, and techs while not mentioning his wife very often, even though she is busy in the background helping him. While reading, I found myself asking, "Is the marriage okay?" "Does the wife feel unappreciated?" and "Does the wife notice all this flirting, and how does she feel about it?"
These questions distracted me. Since the book never answered or even acknowledged them, I wondered whether the author was aware of his prioritization of younger and more unfamiliar women in the narrative over his wife, who was older and more familiar to him. "Does the author even realize the dynamic here?" Bad tension.
Channeling bad-tension questions into the book's larger pattern of escalating tension and release might have turned this bad tension into good tension and led to a stronger book. For example, with the question, "Is the marriage okay?" the book could engage in a pattern of demonstrating that it isn't okay (tension), then it actually is okay (release), then it takes a turn for the worse (tension), then something happens to reassure us (release). The story could raise the stakes for the question a bit each time until the climax, after which there's a partial or final release in the form of the falling action and resolution.
Tension and release don't always have to proceed in one-two order as long as the tension ultimately leads to release at some point. With the question, "Does the wife notice all this flirting, and how does she feel about it?" maybe the tension builds more before the resolution: she doesn't notice (tension), then she does (tension), then she feels bad about it (tension), then the husband tries to make up for it (release), then it happens again (tension), and so on until the climax.
Anticipating questions relating to bad tension can reveal new depths to the story. You might start out asking, "Is the marriage okay?" because of the flirting, but find that it can also raise good tension with other important stuff in the story, like the wife's fatigue from caregiving, the couple's frustration and sadness that things can't be like they were, and the fact that they love each other so much and are afraid of losing each other.
The same question can deliver relief on multiple fronts. Maybe we get release when we learn that the wife sees the flirting as harmless, or when a temporary remission sees the husband back at home with some return to normalcy, or in small moments of shared joy together: all things the original draft of the book didn't allude to.
In the context of a memoir about cancer treatment, the tension and release points related to the marriage would be a B plot supportive to the A plot of the treatment. But they would have been enough to eliminate the bad tension even in that limited capacity.
Channeling reader questions isn't one-size-fits-all. Different target audiences have different questions. I'm a 37-year-old woman in a non-medical profession. My questions might be shared by others in my demographic. A reader who shares this author's unconscious biases might simply wonder, "Were the nurses hot? What does the wife look like?" A readership of female medical professionals might ask, "Did the female doctors, nurses, and techs feel safe around the patient? Did the flirting make providing care more logistically difficult for the practitioner?"
While editing for bad tension, the questions of your target audience are the most important ones to anticipate. If the target audience is asking, "Is the marriage okay?" but the question you are answering is whether the doctors, techs, and nurses were hot, that's not going to alleviate bad tension for the target audience.
Anticipating reader questions improves reader investment. If I'm reading a book and my questions keep getting ratcheted up and then answered, it's like the author is reading my mind. I can't get enough!
Strategy 3: Tone matters
If a book is doing its job, readers can tell whether a book's attitudes are the same or different from the attitudes of the characters or story. That relationship between attitudes is called tone. In books that represent biases, it can be especially important to differentiate between the two so readers are clear on where the book itself stands.
More than half of the manuscripts I see with bad tension aren't using tone to its full potential. That's why I've come to see bad tension as an excellent opportunity to develop tone as a skill.
I once critiqued a novel that had been presented to me as pro-feminist. It was about a man's experience of his partner's growing involvement with second-wave feminism in the 1970s. In the story, the character attributes his partner's mistreatment of him to feminism...but her actual behavior in the novel seems more indicative of traditional domestic abuse. The main character is consistently angry about feminism and the book ends with him reconciling to the idea of a life alone.
It didn't seem very pro-feminist to me.
When my critique commented on the book's anti-feminism, and how it seemed to equate feminism with abuse, the author was surprised. He responded that his goal was to make readers understand the value of feminism and that his main character was meant to be seen as flawed.
I praised the goal but pointed out that the book had done little to develop tone, the contrast between the author's views and the character's views. For example, the third-person narration was full of reported thought and free indirect speech for the main male character alone, with no opportunities to view him, his behavior, or his beliefs from a different perspective. Similarly, the only way we experienced the newly-feminist partner was through his perceptions. A book is what is on the page, and in this instance, the only perspective on the page was the character's.
As you edit for bad tension, consider: You as an author already know what the book's stance on your subject matter is, but is it certain that the reader has been given all the information they need on the page itself? Could it be possible that reader interpretation might have been taken for granted, and more indications need to be planted in the text? Developing tone might be the magic ingredient to turn bad tension into good tension.
Strategy 4: Go big or go home
Sometimes the author simply doesn't know whether the potentially biased content is important to the book or not. The author might be hearing about the possibility of their bias for the first time ever when reading my critique. At that point, the author might still feel like the material in question is "just a part of life" or have a sense that it is key to their story in some way. It's hard for them to explain what it means to them or how they should respond to my criticism.
My advice is usually: take time to process. Then either go big or go home. Make the bad-tension material a feature so you can present it to the reader with all the guidance they need to understand it in the way you intend. If the content is meaningful and important to the story, foreground the contradictions. Question the bias and tease out the various threads of any discomfort you might feel. That's the good stuff.
I'd flip my lid for a book in which the Mexican construction foreman was a central part of the investigation, leading a significant part of the inquiry along with the white protagonist, as she is forced to confront her bias ("But they're our secrets!" meaning her white family, even though he was actually there at the time, and none of the surviving white family members were). I'd cherish the opportunity to read a fictionalized memoir about a woman who enters the BDSM community and slowly starts to realize that something is wrong, that she is using kink as a form of self-harm, and that her internalized bias against mental illness has been leading her to mask trauma and depression. Owning the internalized prejudice helps her to heal and find joy and power through kink (or walk away from the community).
On the other hand, if the content is not meaningful to you in that way, let it go. Or save it for a time when you feel more motivated to interrogate it. Sometimes authors need more time to process realizations about bias than they think. Digestion could be bubbling along under the surface for weeks, and then, wham: they're ready to confront it!
Overcoming the urge to self-justify
Emotionally and psychologically, deciding to go big (drill down into biased material) or go home (throw it out) might not be so simple. The urge to self-justify is strong.
I've noticed that authors who are surprised by a potential bias I found in their manuscript have a knee-jerk reaction to defend the content. They might email me back to try to change my mind, or, if we're in a Zoom call, address me directly.
Engaging with the self-justification has been instructive for me. I've learned there's a difference between complex topics that authors are sufficiently invested in and will commit to exploring more deeply, and biases that authors instinctively lean into when they sense the material will titillate readers.
I'm reminded of the only time I ever asked an author not to send me their future work.
Their manuscript had made me upset. Part of the story shames a character with a physical disability, using exaggerated descriptions of her difficulties with eating and communication to show how noble her non-disabled mother is for tolerating her.
Later, the inciting incident for the non-disabled main character's arc is when her friend, the mother, kills herself and her daughter by driving into a lake.
Let me be clear: the content itself was not an example of bad tension for me. First, the disabled character's disability is shamed to show a non-disabled character's patience and self-sacrifice. Second, she dies so that a second non-disabled character can have an arc of change. That's not bad tension, it's bigotry and exploitation. Nothing to be confused about.
The bad tension came from another direction: the context. The book had been presented to me as progressive. The majority of it was not about disability and actually did seem progressive on non-disability topics.
When I Zoomed with the non-disabled author, she was surprised and upset that I questioned the book's use of the disabled character as a plot device for elevating non-disabled characters. She doubled down: "Believe me, there's a bigger conversation to be had about whether it's kinder to simply end the suffering of people with certain disabilities." The look on her face a second later told me she was surprised to have heard herself say that. Good.
Following my normal strategy, I turned the conversation back to the book with these follow-up questions: Was the book as written actually having any kind of conversation about disability, or was the disabled character a smaller plot device in a story about non-disabled characters? Was the author the right person to be leading that conversation? Was it her story to tell?
The first answer was a flat no: including such a conversation would take too much of the author's time and energy. The second answer was also no, and the author explained that she "didn't have the authority to write that book".
Okay, so if exploring the idea would take too much of your time and energy, what does that say about the authenticity of your connection to the topic? Did you put it in your book because you are deeply invested? Or for another purpose...like getting a sensational reaction from readers? And if you don't have the authority to write a whole book about "whether it's kinder to simply end the suffering of people with certain disabilities," why do you have the authority to use it as a plot device?
I didn't expect the author to back down in the moment, and she didn't. To this day, I don't know what effect our conversation had on her. But the episode is a high-stakes illustration of a situation most authors find themselves in at some point: finding bad tension and hearing a voice saying it's fine as is.
Some authors simply give in to the reflexive defense reaction, saying things like:
"It's important to challenge the reader! That's what books are for, right?"
"Good readers will automatically know my real position on this."
"This content adds flavor, interest, and authenticity. It might be ugly, but it's authentic."
"This is a crucial issue. Society should be having this conversation."
That's a lot of mental labor to defend content that, most often, had just slipped into the draft without the author even noticing. In my experience, underlying these kinds of statements is a resistance to seeing ourselves as people who could harbor a bias without knowing. Recognizing the bias, sitting with the defensive reaction, and assessing whether you have a genuine commitment to the material, is a multi-step process that takes discipline and a willingness to grow through your writing practice. That work might be unwelcome to authors who are writing on a more superficial level. But many authors are willing to take on, even if they haven't done it before.
Authors who aren't sure how to proceed after finding bad tension might find use in the following questions:
Does the content in question have a larger conscious narrative purpose, guidance for readers' thoughts and feelings, and a tone that clearly separates the characters' opinions from the author's?
If not, would I hypothetically be willing to "go big" and drill all the way down into the topic in my book?
Would I even have the time and energy to do a mind map to start visualizing the topic's complexity in today's world?
Does even thinking about mind mapping on the topic make me tired and upset, and want to forget this ever happened?
If the answer to the first question is yes, you might already have thought hard about the best way to position the material. You may even have designed the experience so that readers will feel discomfort: all the better to bring home the messages you're trying to convey. Maybe you just need a few tweaks so your readers and I can feel it's intentional, too.
If your first answer is no but your second and third answers are yes, then congratulations. You may have hit upon a book idea the world really needs. You could be the one who's going to explore the questions, contradictions, and pain points, exposing hypocrisy and bias in a way that can change people and build a better world, doing the conceptual legwork only authors can do. In that case, it's time to zoom in, drill down, and start composing your many-faceted opus.
If, on the other hand, the four answers are three no's and a yes, it might mean that the content in question is evidence of a bias rather than a topic you're passionate about and deeply involved with. At that point, consider removing the material from your book until you know what to do with it. You might need to look deeper at the part of yourself that it came from.
The gifts of bad tension
Some authors may read this article and protest, "But books are supposed to make us uncomfortable!'
I agree. A key function of fiction and creative nonfiction is to make us uncomfortable. After all, an arc of conflict is the backbone of every market-friendly book. Without discomfort, there's no tension. And without tension, there's no release. The trick is to find the right tension.
The right tension makes readers ask questions they're excited to ask...with the knowledge that the book will meet their curiosity with answers. The right tension lets readers explore territory that's frightening and fraught, confident that the author has their journey planned out and is with them at every step.
Bad tension can take readers off that track. All of a sudden, their curiosity is not being met with answers. They're on their own with uncomfortable doubts, including: does the author even know this is here?
But when authors learn how to recognize bad tension in their own work, it can be a gift. It's like a big sign saying, "Dig here for amazing new ideas." Drill into the discomfort and discover a whole new layer to the story. You'll be swimming in the kinds of questions, contradictions, and worries that great books are made of. That stand out on reading lists and in submission pools. That readers (and agents) go wild for.
You'll also find a part of yourself you've never known: a level of authenticity and meaning that was hidden by an unconscious bias. And you can bring that same transformation to readers. Who would want to miss out on that?
Further resources on finding bad tension
Some books don't have bad tension, but in my experience, most do. And oftentimes, it's due to an unconscious bias warping the storytelling. There might be a big old liability sitting right out in plain sight. It's worth the effort to find it.
I work with many authors who identify as progressive. Their intentions are good. The thing is, progressivism isn't the same everywhere, and it changes over time. If progressivism didn't change, it wouldn't be progressive. It's our duty as progressives to stay current on new ideas about how to make our world a safer, more equitable place for those of us with less privilege. That goes double if we're writers: a class of people with a responsibility to think more deeply about just about everything.
There is personal work you can do to reveal unconscious biases in your writing:
Read up on recent changes in mainstream progressivism. Examples: the shift from racial "colorblindness" to antiracism; society's realization about the importance of owning our privilege.
Certain institutions track where progressive values are today. It can be valuable to visit them once or twice a year. Example: Hamilton College's directory of Inclusive Writing Practices.
Read own-voices fiction and nonfiction by members of your characters' demographic. Sites like Goodreads make it easy to find books by authors with a specific ethnicity, class, religion, gender, size, or ability level. As Jendi has pointed out to me, authors do an incredible amount of research for the sake of historical accuracy and worldbuilding. Why should social representation be any different? Browsing Goodreads tags could be a good place to start.
Bone up on tropes. Tropes you grew up on may have worn thin in 2026. Writers who grew up in the mid-1900s (but sometimes younger writers, too) are prone to using Man Friday English, Magical Person of Color, Slavic and Balkan Thugs, Tragic Queer Person, Girliness Upgrade, and more. The more tropes you know, the easier it becomes to find them in your own work. TVTropes.com is an excellent resource, including directories on particularly sensitive topics, race, women, queerness, gender, class, disability, and body size.
Research your target audience
If beta readers in your target audience report bad tension, but you disagree, you might need to do more research on who they are and what they want. Alongside unconscious biases, a difference of opinion, values, or experience can create its own bad tension.
Always edit with target audience questions in mind: What is my target audience likely to be distracted or confused by, or simply need more guidance on? Where do my values and experiences overlap with those of my target audience? Where might our values and experiences differ? Might I have overlooked differences in a way that is causing bad tension in my manuscript?
Many of my clients have never considered target audience, or considered it only lightly, and are astonished at how their writing prospers once they do. If you're one of the uninitiated, I recommend starting with Jane Friedman's article on describing your target audience to agents and publishers.
An online search for "your book is not for everyone" yields multiple excellent discussions about why and how to focus in on your target audience. Two of my favorites are from FriesenPress and Kathleen Schmidt.
Ask directly for feedback on bad tension
"None of my beta readers have ever said my book was racist!"
"My book coach has been nothing but supportive about the way I'm portraying queer people of color."
"My writer's group has never once criticized my portrayal of my disabled characters."
Authors often come back at me with statements like these if I bring up bad tension. It's my duty to counter with a painful truth: If you don't bring it up with your feedback reader, they won't, either.
Why would they? These issues are incredibly delicate and stem from the most fundamental and intimate parts of our worldviews. Your earliest readers may fear that bringing them up could endanger your personal or professional relationship.
If your family and friends are from the same social context you are, they might not recognize the bias, either. And sometimes, the silence is simply because they don't know how to talk about these issues.
If you want to root out bad tension in your manuscript, be bold. Seek out feedback on possible sources of bad tension, especially those related to unconscious biases. Ask your writer's group, beta readers, and book coach:
"I'm trying to find parts of my manuscript that might distract readers with questions I didn't intend. Does anything stick out to you? You won't hurt my feelings."
"Do you see anything potentially problematic in how this character's race, class, or gender is playing in the larger context of the novel? Be honest."
"Do you think that [character name's] story is mine to tell? Why or why not?"
"Is the way I wrote [character name] revealing any unconscious biases on my part? Go on, I can take it."
Of course, try only to say things like, "You won't hurt my feelings" if you're sure you can take it. If the idea of having a conversation like this in person sounds overwhelming, it can help to find a way to let your feedback-givers deliver their observations about bad tension in print or anonymously, or in a way that gives you the option not to respond right away.
If these issues are too sensitive to want to talk about with people you know, hire or find someone you don't know and ask them to read specifically for bad tension. I know from experience that editors highly value the chance to work with authors courageous enough to engage with their own biases.
Ask for feedback from writers and editors of the same demographic as your characters
Sometimes, authors write back to tell me there's no bad tension in their book, but there's clearly a little something between the lines as well:
"None of my [white] beta readers have ever said my book was racist!"
"My [white, heterosexual] book coach has been nothing but supportive about the way I'm portraying queer people of color."
"My writer's group [composed of fully abled or masking individuals] has never once criticized my portrayal of my disabled characters."
Sometimes our friends, family, writer's groups, and book coaches share the same unconscious bias we have. Thankfully, we don't have to limit our feedback to our immediate circle. Sensitivity readers, also called authenticity readers, are a fantastic resource for authors who want to root out bad tension related to character backgrounds. Some websites to help you learn more about them include Firefly Creative Writing, Writing Diversely, and McIntyre Editorial.
