I used to think that to be a writer, I have to be creative—to have a well of stories singing within me, to have dreams that will create either chaos...
We don’t read creative nonfiction just to be informed — we also want to be moved. All our readers have wonderfully distinct perspectives, and all are moved by different elements...
“Prosody is not much taught or talked about, since it was a form of institutional terrorism in the previous, metrical orthodoxy.” Robert Haas, Listening and Making Prosody is a spooky...
This fall, during a very, very long run, I wrote an entire story in my head. At its start, I had an inkling of an idea, and by its end,...
I write poetry to get weird. I want to be the weirdest me there is and then push that marker; I want to float, magnanimous as a blimp; to pop...
16A writer’s voice is their holy grail: key to their success and an absolute nightmare to find. What a strange conundrum, that finding your voice is hard. It should be...
While running the Sweet Trail through Longmarsh, I watched a yellow leaf tumble from sky to still, blue pond. I stopped, let myself linger there, with fingers balled for warmth...
I like Small. Always have. Not because of my height, which is average. Not because of my scope, which, I like to think, is Large. But because Small, in terms...
I’ll never forget the first time I read “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. My tenth-grade English teacher passed around a Tupperware container filled with folded squares of loose leaf—one piece...
There’s something so formal about Word document screens, with their clean, white pages and perfectly straight blinking cursors. They make me feel what I’m about to write must also be...
I don’t mean to sound shallow. There was much that thrilled me at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) 2018 conference in Tampa beyond the buttons, pens, and...
The flight left Boston on the billowing forefront of a Nor'easter that would shut down the Eastern Seaboard the following week. We touched down in Tampa’s breezy 65 degrees. It...