Resources
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Jane Friedman’s Guide to Getting the Most Out of a Writing Conference
Publishing expert Jane Friedman has been speaking at writers' conferences since 2001. In this article from her blog, she gives tips on how to select the best conference for your goals, being a well-prepared speaker, making the most of networking opportunities, and more.
Jane Friedman’s Self-Publishing Links
Digital publishing expert Jane Friedman compiled this extensive list of resources about how to publish an e-book, find the right e-publishing services, and stay on top of changes in the industry.
Jane Friedman’s Self-Publishing Tutorial
This 2017 blog post from publishing expert Jane Friedman walks you through the steps of self-publishing a book. Video tutorial included.
Jane Friedman’s Writing Advice Links
Publishing industry expert Jane Friedman's blog offers a wealth of information on marketing your creative work. This page collects links to her most important articles about writing, publishing, and promoting your book. Topics include getting started on social media, fact versus fiction in memoirs, the pros and cons of creative writing groups, finding an agent, and much more.
Jay Wurts, Writer and Editor
Editor Jay Wurts offers a range of services to indie authors, including developmental editing, ghostwriting, and coaching on how to make your book project more marketable to agents and publishers. He has experience helping culturally diverse and ESL authors package their work for a mainstream audience. He also works with publishers as a freelance editor or ghostwriter.
Jealous
By Laurie Klein Morning, with your pillowed hands twisting over the bed, do you envy human desire, its midnight hinge, covet our slack-jawed alpha waves morphing to REM and then a prance of neurons, an in-burst of the invisible? All those covert sleep spindles slowing the heart, cooling the body—yes, we are lapped 'round with rest: one delta astride a deepening river, one dream richer than silt. Poor Great Ante Meridiem! Another graveyard shift, the looping, half-world commute—no wonder you snap the shade on its roller, muttering, headboard to folded quilt, that this life-size space we share is our first and final host; you rise alone. And we bend, drawing the linens smooth, makers of beds moving in tandem toward that omega breath, unfazed, plumped and glowing, skins fragrant as June, tattooed with our storied nights—oh, to be taken in again and again and then, limp, fading, folded away:... [continue]
Jeff Goins, Writer
This literary blog features profound reflections on creativity and spirituality, along with more practical advice about good writing habits and marketing your work.
Jendi Reiter
Editor of Winning Writers and author of the poetry books Barbie at 50, Swallow, and A Talent for Sadness. Follow her on Twitter (@JendiReiter) for poetry videos, upcoming readings, blog posts, new book releases, and articles of interest to writers.
Jerusalem Slim
By Michael Topa
I did not know it was Joy
And her fingers
Blessing me from words
Trapped in stone
Now in Gethsemane
You who could not wait
One hour sleep like salt
Scattered on the ground
But even now I forget
Where the difference falls
Some say Elijah
Some say John
But Joy you say nothing
And take me on
*This is what my father called Christ, alone
and muttering to himself, while nursing his
Four Roses whiskey at the kitchen table.
Originally published in America: The Jesuit Review, June 26, 2017, as one of three runners-up for the Foley Poetry Prize
Jessica Hische
Jessica Hische is a successful graphic designer specializing in lettering (typefaces), as well as the author and illustrator of the bestselling children's book Tomorrow I'll Be Brave. Check out her website to get cover-design inspiration, purchase fonts for your book, or hire her for a design project.
Jewel Beth Davis
Jewel Beth Davis is a writer and theater artist who has performed, directed, and choreographed professionally throughout the US and UK. She teaches writing and theater at NHTI-Concord Community College. Visit her website to read her stories and essays, which have appeared in such journals as Compass Rose, Lilith, and Diverse Voices Quarterly. She writes about Judaism, family life, humor, the theater world, and much more.
Jewish Review of Books
Launched in 2010, this print and online journal features critical essays about religion, literature, culture, and politics, as well as fiction, poetry, and the arts.
Jewish Storyteller Press
Founded in 2007 by filmmaker and author Scott Hilton Davis, Jewish Storyteller Press is an independent small press that uses print‑on‑demand and e‑book technology to bring English translations of 19th-century Yiddish writers to 21st-century readers. They publish new translations, adaptations, and original stories based on the works of once-famous Yiddish writers such as Sholem Abramovitsh (Mendele Moykher Sforim), Jacob Dinezon, I.L. Peretz, and Sholem Aleichem.
Jim Landwehr
Jim Landwehr is the author of Dirty Shirt: A Boundary Waters Memoir (eLectio Publishing, 2014) and Written Life: A Poetry Collection (eLectio, 2015). His poetry and essays have been published in MidWest Outdoors, The Tattooed Poets Project, Parody Poetry Journal, Torrid Literature, Wisconsin People and Ideas, and numerous other journals and anthologies.
JJ Peña
JJ Peña (he/they) has won prizes for flash fiction from Blue Earth Review, Cutbank, and Mythic Picnic, and serves as a flash fiction reader for Split Lip Magazine.
John Amen: “Walking Unsure of Myself: Election Day, 2004”
Hallucinatory meditation on the political culture of wartime America, by John Amen, editor of the bimonthly journal The Pedestal Magazine.
John Clare Literary Festival
The John Clare Cottage Trust now hosts an annual literary festival each fall in his onetime home in the village of Helpston. Events include the Bard of the Fens Competition, a storytelling and performance poetry contest for authors who live or work within an hour's distance of the Fens region.
Journal of the Month
Journal of the Month is a curated subscription service that sends a different literary journal each time, giving subscribers an overview of the contemporary creative writing market. "Decide how often you want to receive magazines—every month, every other month, or once every three months—and during that period of time, you will receive a brand new literary magazine by the 10th of the month. Exactly which literary magazine you'll get is a tantalizing surprise that changes every month. And you'll never receive the same literary magazine twice." Participating journals include Creative Nonfiction, Ecotone, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, December, and many more.
jubilat
Based at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the literary journal jubilat aims to publish not only the best in contemporary American poetry, but to place it alongside a varied selection of reprints, found pieces, lyric prose, art, and interviews with poets and other artists.
Jubilate Agno
Like a black kite from another dimension, God appears circling above the dying lamb— unhurried hunger weaving through an ordinary sky— His poisoned eyes reflecting the knowledge that his flesh will become His flesh, his blood His blood. Sweeping down in an ever decreasing vortex, black wings shrouding the sun, He steps down from His throne of air. Carrion eater, tearer of flesh, purifier, His terrible skull red from holding back the sun— shit-stained legs and feet clawing the earth in time's shadow, patient, waiting, His skeletal breath stinks of centuries of rotting meat. After an exploratory peck or two He grunts, hisses, then starts with the eyes, as He promises Paradise. Copyright 2011 by Jack Goodman Critique by Jendi Reiter There's something about Christianity and gothic horror that seems to go together, as we see in "Jubilate Agno" by Jack Goodman, a poet from Twin Falls, Idaho. Many... [continue]
Judith Goldhaber
Her collection Sonnets from Aesop, a retelling of 100 fables in verse (beautifully illustrated by Gerson Goldhaber), is available from Ribbonweed Press.
Juneteenth Book Fest
From writers, to artists, to industry pros, the goal is to shine a light on the width and breadth of Black American literature, to strengthen the connection to the communities we write for, and to honor the legacy of Black American storytelling. The inaugural 2020 festival took place online because of the COVID-19 epidemic, but the organizers hope to plan in-person events in future years.
just femme & dandy
Launched in 2021, just femme & dandy is a biannual literature and arts journal created for and by queers on the topic of fashion. See their website for each issue's themed submission call. Editors say, "just femme & dandy embraces all the layers of hybridity that push against the tensions that pressure us to conform. Nothing is off limits. To get an idea of what we accept, think of the following, and beyond: poetry, fiction, nonfiction, comics, illustration, drag, dance, video, film, photography, tutorials, interviews, reviews, listicles, thinkpieces, commentaries, historical investigations, and so on."
Just Publishing Advice
Derek Haines, a speculative fiction and thriller writer, maintains this useful blog with advice for self-published authors, with detailed and timely articles about such topics as using social media to sell books.
Kaleidoscope Magazine
They accept poetry, fiction, essays, interviews and book reviews. Submission deadlines are March 1 and August 1 annually. The editors say: "Unique to the field of disability studies, this award-winning publication expresses the experiences of disability from the perspective of individuals, families, healthcare professionals, and society as a whole. The material chosen for Kaleidoscope challenges and overcomes stereotypical, patronizing, and sentimental attitudes about disability. Although content always focuses on a particular aspect of disability, writers with and without disabilities are welcome to submit their work."
Kansas
I'm being dropped. I took a turn pulling the head of our long line of humming wheels and bobbing legs traversing the empty landscape, and now I've rotated to the back, following behind my neighbor and longtime riding partner. Marc is still getting stronger, but age and injury have started to exact their toll on me. The peloton is a loosely coupled train. Gaps develop and widen as the pace quickens, and I find myself slipping off Marc's tire. I try to sprint back, but there's no starch left. He spins up to another rider in front. Gradually the riders in front grow smaller in the distance and finally disappear. I am churning along with my aching quads under the blue dome of the sky, pulling only myself, being pulled by no one. Suddenly I am no longer in Vermont, but in a place I've been blown back to all... [continue]
Karen J. Weyant
Ms. Weyant's chapbook Wearing Heels in the Rust Belt was a contest winner from Main Street Rag.
Kari (my best friend)
Some monster lay deep in the water that day. It put its fingers to our mouths when it drifted towards what was left of Kari's lungs. Our eyes had never heard death, never tasted that moment when what makes us whole, separates. I remember Kari, afraid of monsters, willing herself to jump from the highest cliff in the pits of the old quarry. It was just that kissing game, truth or dare. The water was deep and black, cold. The monster cut through her with pure mean that thickened the day into ice. I stirred myself into a cocktail of warm. After all, we were making snow angels in the air. We were just teasing her a little. It was all just fun. Dangling arms and pretentious fingers waited for childhood to choke as her weight slammed the rocks and her flesh sliced down to the water in long strips... [continue]
Karla K. Morton
This Texas-based poet's book/CD combo, 'Wee Cowrin' Timorous Beastie', is a 17th-century Scottish epic story, written in rhyme, and set to an original musical score by the Juno award-winning Canadian composer Howard Baer. Morton's creative multimedia project brings the old world of European epic poetry together with a modern cinematic score.
Kate Greenstreet’s Poetry Interviews Blog
Poet Kate Greenstreet blogs at Every Other Day, where she's compiled an archive of over 100 interviews with contemporary poets about the road to first-book publication and how it changed their life (or not). Highlights include advice from Steve Fellner, author of 'Blind Date with Cavafy', on how the right title can help your manuscript get past the contest screeners.
Kathryn Magendie
"Kick-ass woman who says and does what she wants cause she can."
Katie
A dozen scrawny children run and play rags for clothes, and silly boots meant for bigger steps scuffing, jumping, clomping across the rubble strewn square burnt brick, mortar, shattered glass and scrap metal to me a dreadful remnant of war costly won to the children, an undiscovered country to conquer, to tame, to slay dragons therein One lad slips and scrapes his knee I hobble over, and set him on my lap as the others gather round Tell us mister how you lost your leg? I wipe clean his scrape tear off a piece of empty trouser leg to bandage the hurt A German wanted it more than I I find myself smiling an unexpected joy, to bandage a child and not a soldier in his eyes, wonder, hope, and mischief his world burned and bombed and taken away, still he dreams, thanks me kindly and off to battle dragons... [continue]
Kattywompus Press
This small press based in Cleveland Heights, Ohio publishes chapbooks of innovative, contemporary writing in a variety of genres: poetry, a chapbook-length essay collection, a rollicking long prose poem or gaggle of shorter prose poems, a clutch of micro-fictions, one incredible short story, or a chapbook-friendly slice of autobiography, travelogue, art criticism. $15 reading fee. Enter online only. The no-simultaneous-submissions rule is unusual for manuscript submissions, but they promise to respond within four weeks.
Keening
By Kathleen McCoy
It comes back in a rush as you hold the one
who's at that border-bog between
greenness and fever-fire: your dream
where she stands tremulously then falls,
falls into you, heart to beating heart,
passes through your body, rises as a rush
of smoke toward the stained glass
high above your heads.
With nurse's hands now upon her wrist
comes the somber nod. A low horn howls
deep in distance yet grows nearer, red
and black and green, coyote call clawing
over many mountains in dim mist,
watery wail that worms its way
through, in a fit of frisson,
whatever beast you have become.
Keeping It Legal
Lawyer and self-published author Helen Sedwick writes this blog to help writers, particularly self-published ones, navigate the legal issues involved in publishing, promoting, and protecting their work. Topics include fair use, defamation, and copyright.
Keeping Poetry Close: Copper Canyon Poets Read to You
Monica Sok, Ellen Bass, Philip Metres, and other authors of recent titles from prestigious poetry publisher Copper Canyon Press share excerpts from their work in this video series. Editor George Knotek says, "For this time when poetry is abundant but in-person communion with our loved ones is not—a time when we're turning to technology to help us connect with the faces and voices we miss—we offer here the faces and voices of our spring 2020 poets reading from their newest books to bring you both poetry and human connection, from their homes to yours."
Keith Wheeler Books
Children's book author Keith Wheeler creates lively, informative short videos with advice on writing, designing, and marketing your self-published books.
Key Book Publishing Paths
Publishing expert Jane Friedman explains different tracks to book publication in this annually updated chart, which compares the key features of Big Five traditional publishing, small press, indie, hybrid, and self-publishing.
KidLit411
KidLit411 is a site that collects information of interest to children's book writers and illustrators. They post contests, grants, and pitch opportunities. The site also features weekly profiles of writers and illustrators.
Kids’ Book Review
Kids' Book Review is an online journal that showcases authors, illustrators, and publishers in the children's literature field. They publish news, reviews, interviews, articles, guest posts, events, and specialist literacy articles. The site also hosts monthly themed creative writing contests.
Killer Nashville Writers’ Conference
Founded in 2006 by writer/filmmaker Clay Stafford, the Killer Nashville Writers' Conference provides unique educational and networking opportunities for genre and non-genre writers whose work contains elements of mystery, thriller, or suspense. Held in Nashville, TN in August, this four-day event boasts 500+ participants annually. Three crime-writing honors (Claymore, Silver Falchion, and John Seigenthaler Legends) are awarded during the conference.
Kind of a Hurricane Press
This small press publishes several poetry anthologies a year on various themes, in POD print and e-book formats. Recent themes have included "Barbie in a Blender" and "Poised in Flight". The press also sponsors online journals for different types of poetry.
Kingdom Poets
Canadian poet D.S. Martin edits this blog showcasing classic and contemporary Christian poets.
Kirkus Reviews: Complete Self-Publishing Guide for Authors
This free 21-page online guide from Kirkus Reviews, a leading book-review publication, walks new authors through their basic options for design, marketing, and distribution of self-published books.
Kissing in Manhattan
Brilliantly written novel-in-stories seduces the reader with witty sketches of Manhattanites in love and lust, but what began as social comedy ends as a surprisingly moving tale of darkness and redemption. Aspiring short story writers should study Schickler's way with the details that reveal character and milieu.
Know Your Rights: Key Provisions in a Publishing Contract
In this 2021 article on Anne R. Allen's publishing advice blog, literary agent and attorney Joseph Perry explains typical terms in a book publishing contract, such as the grant of rights, advances, royalties, and option clause.
Knowing When
By Mark Fleisher Once heartthrobs and icons now shuffling on and off stage often supported by a sturdy arm of a trusted companion Words still remembered messages still clear sung by voices less vibrant Surgeries, injections cannot mask aging faces bearing witness to too many years too many drugs too many drinks too many nights Why do they go on— the crescendo of applause the swaying of contemporaries mouthing words they've known for decades standing ovations now automatic as if part of the script Now I approach similar days wondering if I will know when or will I stubbornly go on needing an escort to where my words will be heard then helped to a comfortable chair before taken home It is said of musicians athletes, politicians perhaps even poets go out while on top Advice hard to heed when the roar of the crowd still rings in their... [continue]
Korean War Stories
Vivid personal anecdotes and poems based on the experiences of US veterans in the 143rd Field Artillery during the Korean War.
Koss Web Design
Poet and illustrator Koss, a winner of our Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest, is also an accomplished graphic designer who creates logos and websites for writers. See examples of her site designs here and here (logo and website). She also redesigned the Ventura County Poetry Project site and managed their social media.
Kris Spisak’s Writing Tips
Affect or effect? Riffle or rifle? Even experienced authors are tripped up by common words and phrases that are often mistaken for each other. Kris Spisak's blog highlights hundreds of these and explains their etymology to help you remember proper usage.
