Resources
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Writecorner Press
Online publisher and writers' resource site offers a selection of well-crafted short fiction and nonfiction by emerging and established writers, including the winners of Writecorner's E.M. Koeppel Short Fiction Award. The site seems to have ceased being updated in 2014 but the archives are worth reading.
The Writer’s Hotel at The New Guard
The Writer's Hotel is the teaching and editorial arm of the literary journal, The New Guard. The Writer's Hotel hosts a writing conference in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry each June at a "floating campus" in Midtown Manhattan between three hotels with a literary history: The Library, The Algonquin, and The Bryant Park Hotel. The conference includes virtual pre-study with Editors Shanna McNair and Scott Wolven and on-site workshops, lectures, agent speed dating, literary events, and student readings in the city at KGB Bar Lit, The Bowery, and Book Culture. Via The Writer's Hotel, TWH editors also offer a year-long course called "Private Study", which functions much like a low-residency creative writing course.
The Short Story Reading Challenge
This group blog features reviews of short stories and story collections, plus essays on the form.
The Literary Handyman
Fantasy novelist Danielle Ackley-McPhail's blog shares practical advice about structuring a story, marketing your work, and polishing your prose.
The Character Therapist
Having trouble with your fictional characters' motivations? Wondering how to depict mental illness accurately? Jeannie Campbell, LMFT, will sit your imaginary friends down on the couch for a diagnosis.
Self Editing Blog
Brief articles by professional editor John Robert Marlow offer advice on spotting and fixing common problems with your novel, screenplay or nonfiction book. Topics include character names and the proper use of flashbacks and coincidences.
Origami Poems Project
The Origami Poems Project features instructions for creating your own mini-collection of poetry that can fit on a single sheet of paper, to be folded origami-style into book form. Participants' books, with folding instructions, are available for free download from the website. The project was founded by Rhode Island poets Lynnie Gobeille, Jan Keough, and Barbara Schweitzer, who also distribute the featured books as free gifts at local libraries, coffee shops, art centers, and bookstores.
Novel Writing Advice from Caro Clarke
Fiction writer Clarke offers helpful tips on plotting, pacing, revising, and other nuts-and-bolts aspects of creating a novel, in a series of 30 articles originally written for the online magazine NovelAdvice.
National Novel Writing Month
Jump-start that book you've been meaning to write, with this fun project that dares participants to write a 50,000-word novel between November 1 and November 30 each year. Read your fellow scribblers' work online, share ideas and encouragement in the forums, and write without looking back. NaNoWriMo's philosophy is "quantity over quality": what matters is that you overcome your fear of getting started.
Maralys Wills
Writing instructor, speaker, and memoirist Maralys Wills is the author of 12 books, including the writers' manual 'Damn the Rejections, Full Speed Ahead'. Visit her website and blog for writing advice and pithy anecdotes about juggling work and family life.
ECRITUREartefacts
Looking for a stylish, quirky gift for a literary friend? Award-winning poet and ceramics artist Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingde's online store features a wide selection of objets d'art with conversation-provoking lines like "A Good Poem Beats a Dollar Burger", "Chief of Your Own Conscience", "Dadaism Rules/Stinks", "Easter Bunny in Animal Soup", "Madder Than Plath", and "What Gender Performance". Available products include journals, glassware, aprons, totes, t-shirts, pencil cases, iPhone covers, MacBook sleeves, and fine art prints. See more products by Desmond at Lulu.
Critique Speak
This website aims to teach writers and readers how to give and receive constructive feedback, using short animated videos. They offer a contest to submit your own video script for their characters.
Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference
Unique conference designed to set poets with a manuscript-in-process on a path towards publication. Led by award-winning poets Joan Houlihan and Fred Marchant. Includes meetings with editors from leading poetry presses such as Tupelo Press and BOA Editions. The conferences are held several times a year in Harvard, Mass., and Colrain, a town in Western Massachusetts. Visit the Concord Poetry Center website for news of upcoming readings, seminars, workshops and conferences.
BookLender
Like Netflix for books, BookLender (formerly Booksfree) allows customers to rent up to 15 books at a time, with no late fees, due dates, or shipping costs. Members can choose from more than 250,000 paperback titles or 36,000 audiobook titles.
Words That Rhyme
Paul Aubrian created this site featuring lists of words that rhyme with a particular word or syllable. A fun way for formal poets to expand their vocabulary.
Timothy Steele
Website of neo-formalist poet Timothy Steele, a professor emeritus of English at California State University, Los Angeles, includes selections from his poetry and critical essays as well as a useful introduction to traditional poetic forms and meters.
Poetry Through the Ages
Poetry Through the Ages, a project of the Institute for Dynamic Educational Advancement (IDEA), is a free online exhibit that showcases poetic forms and movements from different cultures, with examples and instructions. A special feature of the site is a new poetic form called "node poetry", which breaks the traditional linear flow of a poem into branching clusters of words that the reader can read in different sequences. Drawing its inspiration from synthetic and visual poetry, the form is found exclusively online, and enables readers to take the poet's lines and construct the poem as they explore it.
Poetry Dances
The writers' forum FanStory sponsors this website for emerging writers, which offers tips on writing in a variety of poetic forms.
Landays: Poetry of Afghan Women
The Poetry Foundation website features this essay on landays, a traditional poetic form among the Pashto-speaking people of Afghanistan, which has become a clandestine outlet for women to express dissent and speak of forbidden subjects like love and sensuality. The essay includes many examples of landay couplets with cultural context and photos.
Indrisos
Indriso is a form created by contemporary Spanish poet Isidro Iturat. The poem is formed by two triplets and two one-line stanzas (3-3-1-1), with free use of the rhyme and the number of syllables in its verses. "The indriso comes from the sonnet but it is not a sonnet. In the same way, the sonnet is a variation of the Provençal song but it is not a Provençal song." See examples (mostly in Spanish, with some Englist translations) on his website.
Digital Poetry
Brian Kim Stefans presents "the dreamlife of letters". Words from A to Z scamper, dissolve and deconstruct themselves in this 11-minute animation, Stefans' playful response to postmodern jargon. Read Teemu Ikonen's commentary on the genre, "Moving Text in Avant-Garde Poetry".
Concrete Poetry
Concrete poetry physically arranges words and letters on a page to create an effect that adds meaning to a poem. Explore Michael Garofalo's collection of weblinks to concrete poems and William Delamar's discussion at Werd Trix.
Clerihew
A Word A Day defines a clerihew as "a humorous, pseudo-biographical verse of four lines of uneven length, with the rhyming scheme AABB, and the first line containing the name of the subject." This form is a relatively recent invention of Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956). A typical creation: The people of Spain think Cervantes/Equal to half-a-dozen Dantes;/An opinion resented most bitterly/By the people of Italy.
Chiasmus.com
Chiasmus is "a reversal in the order of words in two otherwise parallel phrases." Dr. Mardy Grothe collects exemplars of the art. We especially like this one, relayed by John F. Kennedy in 1956: http://www.chiasmus.com/mastersofchiasmus/kennedy.shtml
The Poetess in America, an essay by Annie Finch
A well-researched defense of poets who fell out of fashion with the rise of literary modernism. Finch, an acclaimed formalist poet, is critical of modern poetry's emphasis on originality and linguistic complexity. Room should be made for poetry that expresses a community's values in accessible and heartfelt language. Poetesses like Teasdale and Millay "offer a valuable strategy of renewal for poets in the twenty-first century, particularly for women poets who need a new way to connect with pre-twentieth century poetic traditions."
The Fortunes of Formalism
Poet and critic David Yezzi makes the case for mastery of verse forms and prosody as essential to the education of a poet, and gives a historical perspective on formalism's loss of status.
The Chapbook Review
The name of this monthly online journal is self-explanatory. In addition to reviews of new poetry and literary prose chapbooks, the site features critical essays and interviews with authors and publishers. Reviews display a lively voice and eclectic tastes.
Text Etc
Formerly Poetry Magic: A large collection of articles on writing poetry, understanding poetry and getting published. Novice and advanced topics covered. Examples include modernist poetry, postmodernist poetry, sounds in poetry, performing your poem and chaos approaches to poetry analysis.
Terrible Minds
Fiction writer and "freelance penmonkey" Chuck Wendig delivers ballsy, bracing advice for writers at his entertaining and useful blog. Got writer's block? He'll tell your inner demons where to go and how to get there.
Stages and Pages
Writer, editor, and theatre professional Francine L. Trevens reviews books, movies, and stage productions at her blog.
Silliman’s Blog
Thoughtful reflections on contemporary poetry and poetics from award-winning poet and editor Ron Silliman.
Rhyme or Reason - What Makes a Good Poem?
J. Paul Dyson, editor of FirstWriter magazine, discusses how to integrate rhyme more effectively into your poem and choose the right style for your subject. Too often, says Dyson, beginning poets focus solely on making the lines rhyme, at the expense of word choice and flow.
Recovering the Lost Joy of Poetry Games
This essay by poet Marcus Goodyear from the magazine Books & Culture celebrates the playful spirit in poetry and contends that it can be a necessary leaven for poems that address difficult themes.
Poets & Writers: A Frequent Winner’s Advice
In this interview with Poets & Writers Magazine from January 2009, award-winning poet Cynthia Lowen offers tips for maximizing your success with writing contests.
Poetry’s Perilous Popularity
From Slate, A.O. Scott and Katha Pollitt probe the gap between 'official' poetry and poetry's stealth bestsellers, and the challenge of teaching classic work without scaring students away. "I think a lot more Americans read poetry than we think, just not necessarily the poets most admired by Helen Vendler and Harold Bloom."
Poetry Debates & Manifestos
Thirty-one younger American poets take on some of the great debates and literary manifestos from the history of modern poetry. One of many stimulating compilations from the Academy of American Poets' National Poetry Almanac.
Poetic Asides by Robert Lee Brewer
Poetry blog on the Writer's Digest website features interviews with contemporary authors, writing prompts, advice on the craft, and introductions to exotic poetic forms.
On the Idea of Order: Manuscript Advice from Tupelo Press Editor Jeffrey Levine
In this blog series, the editor of prestigious literary publisher Tupelo Press offers advice on the ordering and editing of a poetry manuscript.
On Making the Poetry Manuscript: Advice from Tupelo Press Editor Jeffrey Levine
Jeffrey Levine, editor of the prestigious independent publisher Tupelo Press, offers solid advice on collecting your poems into a coherent manuscript and presenting them to best advantage.
Lemon Hound
Poet Sina Queyras runs this blog about the theory and practice of poetry criticism. Lemon Hound's "10 Questions for Reviewers" series interviews prominent poet-critics about their goals and techniques. The "How Poems Work" series features a poem by a prominent contemporary author, plus a critique by one of his or her peers.
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.
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.
Interviews with Practicing Writers by Erika Dreifus
Fiction writer Erika Dreifus publishes the Practicing Writer e-newsletter, a monthly roundup of markets, contests, and writing advice, in which these interviews first appeared. Featured authors include Kimiko Hahn, Tayari Jones, Ellen Meeropol, and Dinty W. Moore.
How to Write in 700 Easy Lessons
In this essay from The Atlantic's 2010 fiction issue, novelist Richard Bausch argues that writers' manuals are a poor substitute for honing one's aesthetic sense through immersion in great literature. "One doesn't write out of some intellectual plan or strategy; one writes from a kind of beautiful necessity born of the reading of thousands of good stories poems plays… One is deeply involved in literature, and thinks more of writing than of being a writer. It is not a stance."
From Page to Pixels: The Evolution of Online Journals
In this article from the May/June 2009 Poets & Writers Magazine, award-winning poet Sandra Beasley discusses the growing prestige of online publication and the advantages it offers for disseminating your work. Recommended journals include Blackbird, Coconut, and Drunken Boat.
FlashFiction.net
Updated daily, this site features short craft essays on writing and marketing your flash fiction.
Essay Daily
Curated by DIAGRAM editor Ander Monson, Essay Daily is a space for ongoing conversation about essays and essayists of note, contemporary and otherwise. They mostly publish critical/creative engagements with interesting essays (text and other), Q&As with essays or essayists, and reviews of essays, essay collections or book length essays, or literary journals that publish essays. Query before submitting.
Does Poetry Matter? an essay by William Waltz
Prizewinning poet William Waltz investigates why there are more writers than readers of poetry. Today's highbrow poets, he ventures, should plumb their playful side. "Despite the messy state of affairs today, the poetry world is primed for (and maybe on the verge of) a roaring comeback. And, although many poets seem content to write poems that only connoisseurs and mothers could love, a growing populist movement seems bent on dragging poetry back into the mainstream."
Djelloul Marbrook
Award-winning poet and journalist's weblog features essays on contemporary poets, contextualized with reflections on politics and culture.
Dispoet
Insightful blog about poetry and disability includes brief reviews and discussions of contemporary poets writing about the subject (Floyd Skloot, Jim Ferris and others), plus contests and resources.
