Resources
From Category:
Jane Friedman’s “MBA for Writers” Lectures
Digital publishing expert and former Writers' Digest executive Jane Friedman's blog contains a wealth of resources for professional writers. Her 6-part "MBA for Writers" online lecture series covers the principles for success in today's rapidly changing industry. You can purchase access to the whole series or individual sessions.
Indies Unlimited PublishingFoul Survey
Indies Unlimited is a platform to promote the work of self-published and small press authors and discuss best practices in the industry. This page summarizes the results of their 2015 PublishingFoul survey, which asked authors to share stories of being scammed by publishers. Follow them on Twitter @IndiesUnlimited and search the #PublishingFoul hashtag to keep up with and contribute to this conversation.
The Offing
The Offing, an affiliate of the Los Angeles Review of Books, is an online literary magazine publishing creative writing in all genres and art in all media. The journal seeks work that challenges, experiments, provokes: work that pushes literary and artistic forms and conventions, while demonstrating a rigorous understanding of those forms and conventions. The Offing welcomes work by people of color, women and gender nonconformists, LGBTQ and differently abled people. This is a paying market. Contributors have included Paul Lisicky, Eileen Myles, and Matthew Rohrer.
from Love Justice
By Bracha Nechama Bomze
[In this excerpt from Bomze's book-length poem Love Justice (3Ring Press, 2015), she is speaking to her partner about the latter's family history.]
My darling, who is this woman who gave you birth?
Brooklyn-born to anti-Tsarist revolutionary immigrants
her father, an escaped Bundist from 1905 failed uprising,
chosen Honor Guard at the funeral of martyred sailors from the Battleship Potemkin
(He quips: "I didn't need to see the movie—I was there!")
Your grandmother denied a job by Triangle Factory bosses
whether for her famed paddy wagon lock-ups
for sweatshop organizing, or for her klutzy sewing skills,
one week before the murderous blaze, March 25, 1911.
What if they weren't paying attention at Grandma Sheindl's interview
as she stitched her trial sample—an only slightly tangled mess?
What if they just needed a body,
a Yiddish-speaking girl's body
to seat, as was their custom, beside an Italian-speaking girl
lest two teenage neighbors, machines hammered down side-by-side,
stitch insubordinate whispers into ready-to-wear plans,
baste strong threads from a common tongue into off-the-rack revolt?
What if her notorious unionism had escaped their cold scrutiny?
What if she'd pulled off a few swift needle tricks and aced their test?
What if, uncharacteristically,
she'd managed to restrain herself,
refrained from needling the bosses with wry, sassy quips?
What if they hadn't sniffed out her apron crammed with subterfuge,
Yiddisher Arbeiter Bund leaflets stuffed in her lunchpail?
What if they hadn't been warned by a prior boss
of her paddy wagon excursions for justice?
Hundreds of young seamstresses
locked down inside towers of ragged scraps
locked down to keep out women like Sheindl
locked down to shut in women like Sheindl.
The only fire escape window, with a secret key,
by a foreman's resolute click, padlocked...
A burning cigarette flickers, hurling sparks.
Dusty mountains of fabric explode in volcanic flame.
Bosses flee the executive door, bolting stairway doors behind them
lest some seamstress child take undue advantage,
escape alive, but with a few spools of thread, a tin of buttons,
a pincushion not yet deducted from her salary
stashed inside her flaming smock.
One hundred forty-six workers, within minutes, morph into ash.
Or, wailing, screaming, the women help each other to leap,
from the high diving board of the ninth floor sill
to the empty pools of Washington Street, Greene Street
empty but for the charred bodies of girls too poor to stay in school.
Joe Zito, elevator operator, escorts his terrified sisters
into a flaming free-fall
no fire ladders can reach.
No nets can sustain the impact
of their bodies slamming the sidewalks
thud after thud after thud after thud.
Each strand of long, dark hair a wick in a blazing memorial candle.
What if what if what if what if...
What if, somehow, Triangle bosses had chosen Sheindl?
Then never could I have chosen—you.
What can be escaped?
What will always follow?
Bud
By J.C. Todd
What an exact moment,
beyond stop watch, clock, daily planner.
Nothing meted out. Pure season,
expression of something immense
that you barely glimpse.
Coiled tight like spirochetes, hundreds
squinched in a head, how many heads
on a bush? On a bank of them? Fragrance
when sun hits not green but not blossom.
Less cloud, longer light, a shift of wind
to south—imagine—detonation
as though bombs have been ticking below notice,
ticking in a rhythm so full of silence
who could count it out?
Each noon buds loosen, scent is more intense,
perfume you long for, whiff of an awakening
so piercing it will disappear as you open to it.
The brain can't hold such beauty
and keep the body running.
Just before it blows into bloom
you could die of it—lilac.
Cut, it will fade. You'll say it's lost
its scent, but that's been given
to you, and to stay alive,
you've had to forget.
Le dur désire de durer,
how harsh the desire to endure.
Originally published in Big Bridge, Issue #16
Fireship Press
Fireship Press, based in Tucson, AZ, publishes e-books and print-on-demand books of nautical and historical fiction and nonfiction. They publish a wide range of works from Age of Sail, Medieval and Renaissance histories, to Westerns and Civil War fiction. The press's Cordero imprint publishes fantasy, murder mysteries, thrillers, biographical and instructional books.
tree turtle
tree turtle is a Pushcart Prize–winning writer, educator, and activist, whose work explores the intersection of black, LGBT, Buddhist, and working-class identities. tree turtle's work has appeared in journals such as Fence Magazine, The New Formalist, Prick of the Spindle, Ploughshares, and many others. Eight works of couture book art were published by Widows Nails Press, a project of Marcel Christian Labeija, who was also an affiliate of the famed Nuyorican Poets Café.
Stock Photo Resources at Canva
Canva, an online community sharing best practices in web design, has compiled this directory of sources for free stock photos that writers can use for blogs, book covers, and other promotional materials.
Trish Hopkinson Poetry Blog
Poet Trish Hopkinson is the author of the chapbooks Emissions and Pieced into Treetops, as well as many poems published in literary journals. On her blog, she shares interesting writing tips, articles, calls for submissions (no-fee only), and other information to help promote good writing.
Poetry Has Value
Poet and professor Jessica Piazza started this blog in 2015 to chronicle her plan to submit her poetry exclusively to journals and markets that paid their contributors. She wanted to challenge the prevailing culture that expects poets to be satisfied with publication or prestige rather than making a living. The blog features links to paying markets, interviews with editors and publishers, and essays by other professional writers about the financial aspects of poetry publishing.
Step-by-Step Guide to Dealing with Content Theft
In this article at The Book Designer, a resource website for self-published and indie authors, attorney Helen Sedwick explains how to combat unauthorized uses of your writing. Common infringements include websites offering unlicensed electronic downloads of your books, or reposting or republishing your blog content without attribution.
In a Kept World
By Carmine Dandrea. This noteworthy chapbook from Finishing Line Press is a unified 17-poem cycle voiced by a solitary older man inside a house in Michigan in deep winter. As the "prime suspect" of his own examinations, he reflects on mortality and time wasted. Women from his past reappear as nameless sirens and ghosts, arousing both desire and regret that he did not value their intimacy enough. Despite the assaults of unforgiving weather and the temptation to succumb to darkness, he also finds moments of sensual joy and radiance in the ordinary furnishings of his monastic cell. The recurring image of the garden comes to represent not only the literal promise of spring but the "seeds of love" and "sureness of life" that he wants another chance to cultivate in his soul.
Where the Meadowlark Sings
By Ellaraine Lockie. This widely published writer is known for narrative poems that capture the unique character of a place and its people. In her eleventh chapbook, winner of the 2014 Encircle Publications Chapbook Contest, she returns to her native Montana to honor the land that her parents and grandparents farmed. The collection includes humorous character sketches, elegies for towns hollowed out by economic collapse, and love songs to the landscape that revives her spirit.
[insert] boy
By Danez Smith. This debut full-length collection is a furious love song to black men, whom he embraces as lovers and mourns as brothers slain by racist violence. An award-winning slam poet, Smith is superlatively skilled at translating the rhythms of spoken word to the page, with double-entendre line breaks that snap from comedy to tragedy, or back again, in the space of a single breath. These poems are inspired in the religious sense of the word, revealing the sacred in the body's earthiest moments, and sounding a prophetic call against injustice.
The Side of the Road
By Dawn Schout
You are relief from cement, stones,
a soft place to land,
trod only by shoes, no youthful bare feet.
You may not be decorated
with daisies, but you'll get
other gifts: the first
slice of bread, apple cores,
empty boxes,
sweat from runners,
flavorless gum, strands
of hair longer than grass,
spit, words we no longer want
to read, bandages holding blood,
all we have to offer,
these little pieces of us.
DutchCulture/TransArtists
The website TransArtists posts listings of artist-in-residence programs from around the world. There are opportunities for writers, performers, visual artists, graphic designers, fashion and applied arts practitioners, and more. It is a project of DutchCulture, an Amsterdam-based center for international cooperation.
Masters Review (The)
The Masters Review is an online and print literary journal dedicated to supporting emerging writers. They publish short fiction and nonfiction, craft essays, and interviews with established authors. Ten winners of their annual fiction contest receive cash prizes and publication in an anthology that is mailed to agents, editors, publishers, and authors nationwide. The contest has been judged by prominent writers such as A.M. Homes and Lev Grossman. Contributors to the magazine are also paid. See website for deadlines and rules.
The Weeds
By Gil Fagiani
Last of the old-time Yankees,
the Weeds never mixed
with their suburban neighbors
and kids said the younger brother was psycho,
pulling a knife on trick-or-treaters
when they knocked on the door.
A fence thick with vines and branches
blocked a view of their yard,
vibrant with snorts, grunts, moos,
clucking, cawing. I once spotted
the elder Weed driving his pick-up truck
with a live deer in the front seat.
When the peacocks came,
their piercing cries echoed
through the neighborhood
He-lp! He-lp! He-lp!
At first, thinking someone needed a hand,
I ran down and rattled the gate door,
but the younger Weed waved an ax
and scared me away.
I got used to the peacocks' cries,
saw them parading on the sidewalk
by the Weeds' house,
their upright purple plumes,
the rainbow eye
of their erect tail feathers.
One day a police car stopped
and two cops asked about reports
of a man shooting at pet dogs,
when the peacocks cried
He-lp! He-lp! He-lp!
What's that? the cops asked.
Sounds like somebody’s in trouble, I said,
pointing to the Weeds' house.
When the cops arrived,
the younger Weed cursed at them,
shotgun in hand
and, after a brief standoff,
he was taken away in handcuffs
—to the funny farm, I heard—
and never seen again.
A Letter to Grandpa
By Jackie Smith
Dear Grandpa,
You must know this.
I remember it all.
Paula was your favorite
But you taught us both to whittle
With your pocket knife.
"Don't tell Grandma," you warned.
We sharpened sticks
Bled milkweed sap onto the points
Poison darts for a game we never played.
You walked us to the drug store
Sat us at the counter with Cherry Cokes
While you went next door for a beer.
"No need to tell Grandma."
Our little secret.
Your breath smelled like beer
The night you held me on your lap.
We picked tomatoes with you
The pungent scent burning our nostrils
Hairy vines brushing our thighs
Leaving red welts like scars
Warm fruit, juice running down chin
Crimson, acid tears.
After fourth grade
I never wanted to see you again.
That last time.
You knelt before me crying
Begging forgiveness.
Writing this, you gone extinct
Me exhausted from cursing you
Is as unsettling as the kiss you
Placed on my forehead
Yet I say, "Dear Grandpa"
Because that is what good girls say.
And I am always a good girl.
Ink From the Pen
Ink From the Pen is a nonprofit website that accepts submissions of inmates' artwork and sells prints and T-shirts to benefit the prisoners and their families. Writers who work with prisoners may find this a useful resource to encourage their creativity.
Pretty Machine
By Mara Adamitz Scrupe
You had her longer, rode her
harder, she let you down at least
as often, threw a rod, staggered up mountains
and off again, pushed through deserts,
loaded up now, strapped for the drive
to Annandale, for the man with a bleeding
ulcer which is better than a heart attack,
he wants her, though if his wife were around—
but she's gone, a couple years now, he's adjusted
pretty well but the ulcer didn't come
out of nowhere, a peck and a quick goodbye—
that's how we do it, it's already afternoon,
you'll grab a sandwich on your way
back, I'll eat leftovers tonight you'll tell me
the new owner's turned his wife's house
into a shop moved in bikes in various stages
of tear-down and rebuild, Triumph triage
everywhere, work stands at eye level in the guest
room watching TV he scoots on a stool as he
works, Amal carbs line up neatly on the dining room
table, he never sits anyway but stands slouched paper
plate in one hand folded slice in the other, components
freshly painted dry on clotheslines
strung across the living room, guests sit
on the three-cushion sofa parts skimming past,
yours is the one he'll ride if all goes well
in Emergency, he's waited forty years
while you tore up gravel on the ALKAN,
while you camped the outskirts of Vegas circus,
circus! he dreamed a first kick engine, she dreamed
new floral davenports, matching brocade
drapes, you promised groceries on your way
home, your tread on the stairs pulls me
awake, you sit at the edge of the bed
beside me in the dark, your lips brush
my forehead, you reach for my hand your fingers
spreading mine apart to fit
Reprinted from Beast (NFSPS Press, 2015)
TOON Books
TOON Books publishes high-quality comic books for children, designed to teach verbal and visual literacy in a more engaging format than traditional books for first readers. Editorial Director Françoise Mouly is the Art Editor of The New Yorker magazine. Notable contributors include Art Spiegelman, Hilary Knight (creator of Eloise), and Neil Gaiman.
Tim Weed’s Storycraft Blog
Tim Weed is an award-winning novelist, lecturer, and travel-writing program director. His "Storycraft" blog analyzes great novels and short stories from a craft perspective to help aspiring fiction writers. Featured authors include Tolkien, Hemingway, Steinbeck, James Joyce, Cormac McCarthy, Ian McEwan, Hilary Mantel, John Le Carré, Donna Tartt, Ray Bradbury, Phillip Pullman, Peter Carey, Leslie Marmon Silko, and many others. There are also more general posts on the importance of narrative in the modern age, what literature can do that film cannot, the archetypal Shadow in fiction, the art of the scene, and more.
YesYes Books
YesYes Books publishes books of innovative contemporary poetry, prose, and visual art, as well as the online journal Vinyl Poetry. See website for their Pamet River Prize, for a first or second full-length book of poetry or prose by a female-identified or genderqueer author. Writers in their catalog include Rebecca Hazelton, Danez Smith, and Ocean Vuong.
Teen-Talk Exchange
by Helene Pilibosian
took Taralee to the drawing board
pretending to be desk.
She abstracted shapes
from theorems of geometry,
held the compass point firm
and turned it like a pirouette,
its trance of triangle
touching at a sharp point
then bouncing toward a rectangle
leaning upon the balance
of a diagonal. Add thirst of line.
Then coloring in was less a fuss,
the third dimension,
the light effects of life,
the ginger stain,
the strawberry rain,
the privilege of trees,
transgressions of berries,
blood of dandelion stems,
legendary encyclopedia of plants,
red ants transporting crumbs,
Armenian blue beads or gabouyd hloun
for luck of color or lack of chance,
circumstances allowing for birds
with prancing feathers—
parrots, peacocks, love birds—
the soft eyes of deer,
mathematical monkeys jumping at trees,
fish exchanging gills like a hobby,
exotic flowers bowing to girls,
magnanimous tomatoes juiced,
oranges diced with skin,
even the slithering of snakes
through the yellowed grass,
the romance of cherry blossoms in spring,
a fling of ripened cherries
along with apples, pears, apricots
and the science of brochures
adding or subtracting every feature.
She framed the drawing with self-expression
and hung it in her room.
Aerogramme Writers’ Studio
Hosted in Melbourne, Australia, Aerogramme Writers' Studio publishes news and resources for emerging and established writers. The site features craft articles, upcoming publication opportunities, book recommendations, and literary humor. Follow them on Twitter @A_WritersStudio for timely announcements of contests and calls for submissions.
a moment
By Patricia Blanco
as I lie like a frayed baby
you balance the abstract of your bones
with one eye at my stone hand
the other sweeping the riddle of dust
dodging dog bites to his toes
our son jumps like a crimson god
gathering the cats' narrow hisses
behind shadows unsettled
a suspended tale in time
pressing each breath
neither forward nor behind
there seems to be no more else
to ease the moment
not one moment left
to meet your eyes again, yet
you take my hand
heavy and unloading
and make a moment
inescapable from flowering
Memorial
By Diana Anhalt
Massive steel slabs, like hostile vegetation,
rise twelve meters high. This monument
of rusting pages thrusts upwards, outwards.
It walls in the trees of Chapultepec Park,
and casts shadows on mourners who come
bearing words for their desaparecidos.
Armed with fistfuls of chalk, a jack knife, a car key,
people punish the pillars with prayers, imprecations:
May they drown in their victims’ blood, Dios santo.
They finger the letters: Pinche gobierno, we don’t need
a monument. What about justice? And give voice
to the slabs: They left me nothing, not even a grave.
No one signs their names. Across the face of a pillar
vertically placed vague outlines of white chalk fade
to ghostly images, come back to haunt us:
Our country has lost its way and God has lost his ears.
Blood Flower
By Pamela Uschuk. Uschuk is a shamanic poet, invoking the spirits of animals, mountains, and forests, to heal a world that humans have spoiled with war and greed. This poetry collection from Wings Press also gives a voice to her family's ghosts, starting with her Russian immigrant ancestors, and moving on to her late brother and first husband, who were permanently scarred by their service in Vietnam. Nature imagery is a great strength of Uschuk's writing. These are not stylized, sentimental birds and flowers. They are "cliff swallows taking needles of twilight/into their open beaks, stitching/sky's ripped hem." They are the "red velvet vulva of roses" and "yellow ginkgo leaves/waxy as embalmed fans warm[ing] grave stones". Their specificity helps the reader believe that these sparks of life are just as real as the scenes of atrocities that surround us in the news media. Their beauty pulls a bright thread through the darkest stories she tells.
Black Poets Speak Out
Black Poets Speak Out is a video series launched in November 2014 to protest police violence against people of color. In these videos, contemporary black poets read their own writing or that of their predecessors who have written about blackness and police brutality. Featured work includes poetry by Amiri Baraka, Lucille Clifton, Toi Derricotte, Cornelius Eady, Langston Hughes, and Audre Lorde. Follow them on Twitter at #BlackPoetsSpeakOut or subscribe to this Tumblr blog to be notified of new videos.
Submishmash Weekly
Free weekly e-newsletter from Submittable, a popular online submissions platform, contains news and opportunities for writers, artists, and filmmakers.
Orison Books
Orison Books publishes spiritually-engaged poetry, fiction, and nonfiction of exceptional literary merit. Editors say, "In our view, spiritual writing has little to do with subject matter. Rather, the kind of work we seek to publish has a transcendent aesthetic effect on the reader, and reading it can itself be a spiritual experience. We seek to be broad, inclusive, and open to perspectives spanning the spectrums of spiritual and religious thought, ethnicity, gender identity, and sexual orientation." Anthology proposals and fiction and nonfiction manuscripts are accepted year-round. There is an open reading period for poetry manuscripts in the spring and a contest in the winter with a large cash prize and prestigious judges. See website for online submission guidelines.
The Year of Yellow Butterflies (The Blog)
This site is the blog companion to Joanna Fuhrman's book The Year of Yellow Butterflies (Hanging Loose Press, 2015), a collection of poems about fads and trends from imaginary pasts. Readers who wish to contribute their own prose-poems beginning "It was the year of..." may submit them through the blog contact form along with a short bio. Contributors to the site have included Maria Garcia Teutsch, Susan Lewis, Maureen Thorson, and a 5-year-old named Ian.
Hour of Writes
Hour of Writes is a UK-based online writing forum that hosts weekly writing contests judged by the site members. Each week, a prompt is posted on the site, and entrants have one hour (from the time they click "start") to submit a poem or short prose piece in response. Every piece is critiqued, and the winner each week receives a modest cash prize. There is a small entry fee plus the obligation to judge three other entries. The site's mission is to encourage people to devote one hour each week to working on their creative writing.
Rain Gives
By Carol Smallwood
remembrance of floating—
the illusion encouraged by people
under umbrellas, huddled in cars,
part of the whole yet separate.
Grass turns so green it hurts the eye;
sidewalk cracks fill to water weeds.
My umbrella the color of skin gives
rain a voice: thunder assures you
are not alone.
Purity and Nonsense
This two-part essay by award-winning poet Brian Brodeur discusses the prosody of nonsense verse and compares it to other types of avant-garde art. Is it aesthetically significant, as a kind of distillation of poetry to its abstract elements of sound and rhythm, purified of "meaning"? Or is it just a sophomoric prank? Read Part 1 and Part 2 on The Best American Poetry blog.
Pitch Travel Write
Full-time freelance travel writer Roy Stevenson's website gives tips on how to develop and market original ideas for travel articles, as well as practical information for planning your trips.
Beijing and I Meet for the First Time
By Meg Eden
When I first met Beijing, she said,
What're you doing here?
It's not the Olympics yet.
I tried to tell her I was here
to see her country, to get away
from my home, but she tried
to sell me bootleg plushes
of pandas, and I caved in.
When I first met Beijing,
the street was cold
and there was a boy
who had a hole in his pants
where his penis stuck out,
purple and small.
I asked her about that boy
but she said, I hear
our mall is the largest in the world—
She gave me a five star hotel room
with a waterfall in the lobby.
Every time I passed through
that lobby, I thought about the boy.
When I first met Beijing,
all she wanted to do
was practice her English.
I told her I was interested
in writing poems, but
she didn't know
what that was.
I said I wanted to hear
all about her—what she believes
in, where she goes for daily
fun, the names of her friends
and what they hope to become—
but she said there are some things
that shouldn't be talked about.
Corporal Works
By Lynn Domina. This now widely published author's debut collection from Four Way Books enters into the mysteries of love, work, and death, through small but pivotal moments between parents and children, husbands and wives. Although it moves like a family history with flashbacks, the scenes have a timeless quality because the relationship of the characters from one poem to the next is left undefined. The woman speaking in first-person could be the author, the daughter of the farming couple with the strained marriage who appear in some of the other poems, or an invented character.
My God Is This a Man
By Laura Sims. The author's third collection from Fence Books is a haunting collage of fragments from writing by and about serial killers, juxtaposed with lyric passages and stark abstract visual elements such as square frames and all-black pages. There are no gruesome details here. Sims is interested in the philosophy of self-expression through crime, an exploration that is no less chilling for being primarily cerebral. The mind-field we enter in this book is fragmented, grandiose, and claustrophobic.
Climbing PoeTree
Climbing PoeTree is a spoken-word performance duo that uses art as a force for popular education, community organizing, and personal transformation. Poets, performance artists, print makers, video and graphic designers, muralists, and new media architects, Alixa and Naima create compelling works at the service of their vision for a more just and livable world. Climbing PoeTree's award-winning performance is composed of dual-voice spoken word poetry, hip hop, and multi-media theatre that challenges its audiences to remember their humanity, dissolves apathy with hope, exposes injustice, and helps heal our inner trauma so that we may begin to cope with the issues facing our communities. Innovative educators, Alixa and Naima have lead hundreds of workshops in institutions from Columbia University to Rikers Island Prison. They are currently developing a multimedia curriculum based of their latest production, Hurricane Season, that employs art and culture to help learners analyze systems of oppression and resistance, and build new leadership essential for fundamental social change.
Blue Heron Book Works
Blue Heron Book Works is an independent small press founded by novelist Bathsheba Monk. Their main focus is literary memoirs, but they will also consider fiction if it is in a series. Books are published as e-books and print-on-demand editions. The press bears the up-front costs of editing, formatting, copyrights, and ISBN numbers, and they work with the author to create a marketing plan. Monk says they are looking for "unusual stories, or ordinary stories unusually well-told...Great story trumps stylistic virtuosity. No recovering addict stories unless the author joined the circus to recover...so to speak. No cured from cancer stories unless author went on to join a convent and feed the poor...ditto." Their catalog includes Paul Heller's Last Call, a #1 Kindle bestselling memoir about caring for a parent with dementia.
Directions of Folding
By Heather M. Browne
I saw a horrible accident
Ocean blue papered Holiday dry cleaning
Bundled tight
Not her place to cross
Not between the lines
Ignored directions
She flew
High
Confetti tossed skyward
Red, green, blue, skin
A holiday popper
So odd to see a body fly
Twist, turn
Somersault tumbling in the air
A baby doll thrown
Kaleidoscoped view
Her body forgot the order in the sky
Directions of folding
As the potpourri of cloth, paper, skin
Crumbled to the soiled ground
A towel after washing
Clothes from wearing
Napkin following a meal
Body after crash
No care of bend, fold, crease
Done with use
Discarded directions
She crumpled amongst rumpled napkin, paper, cloth
Scattered littering the road
Not along the creases
So unnatural the folding
Origami limb
Prima Facie
By Trish Hopkinson
Huddled in the corner
where only a creak of light
cast a thin line 'cross his back.
Belief's blackness pressed into his sympathy
like a fire-heated symbol meant for permanence,
meant for slavery.
Ears marked with indoctrination
and freedom castrated by abstinence,
his hands ached for resolution, for reason,
for something to clean the char
from beneath his fingernails.
His voice strained with the rasp
of each unanswered question
and his teeth bent with the burden
as his tongue tore away at vision.
He saw the brand waiting in the flame.
He saw the labels that it made.
It took him years to leave his religion.
David Biespiel: Follow Your Strengths, Manage Your Weaknesses
In this essay for the online journal The Rumpus, widely published poet and teacher David Biespiel makes a good case for playing to one's strengths as a writer and spending less time fixing weaknesses. The troubleshooting emphasis of most writing workshops, he says, leaves writers feeling demoralized, and takes energy away from turning their good skills into great ones. Instead, try to become more of what you already are, and work on what you enjoy.
Open Road Integrated Media
Open Road Integrated Media is a digital publisher and multimedia content company. Open Road creates connections between authors and their audiences by marketing its e-books through a new proprietary online platform, which uses premium video content and social media. Their mission is to give publishing's "vibrant backlist" fresh exposure in the digital marketplace. Open Road has published e-books from legendary authors including William Styron, Pat Conroy, Jack Higgins, and Virginia Hamilton, and has launched new e-stars like Mary Glickman. Their current projects include reviving out-of-print LGBT classics for e-book readers.
Playing By the Book
By S. Chris Shirley. This funny, heartfelt, and enlightening YA novel follows a Southern preacher's kid on his journey to accept his sexuality without losing his faith. When 17-year-old Jake ventures outside his Alabama small town for a summer journalism program at Columbia University in New York City, he learns that the world is more complex than he imagined, and maybe God is too. Refreshingly, he doesn't reject his family and traditions, but instead takes on the adult responsibility of teaching and transforming them.
Editing Versus Proofreading Explained
The website of The Expert Editor, an Australian vendor of editorial services for books and dissertations, offers this handy overview of the differences between proofreading and copyediting, and how to choose the level of editing that's right for you.
The Inquisitive Eater: New School Food
The Inquisitive Eater: New School Food is a project of the interdisciplinary university The New School, in New York City. The journal provides a forum for artists and academics to explore the intersections between food and family, the environment, politics, economics, social justice, and media. Submissions may be short stories, personal essays, poems, reviews of books, movies and TV, visual art, multi-media projects, or academic work. Enter via online form.
The Sports Museum
The Sports Museum is a nonprofit educational institution housed in the TD Garden in Boston, which draws on the heritage and values of the New England sporting tradition to help build character in kids. Their programs include the annual Will McDonough Sports Writing Contest for youth in 4th-12th grades.
