Strategic Submissions: Best Practices for Your Pursuit of Writing Opportunities
The best method of getting the literary community to regard you as a serious writer and not a dilettante—even though you have yet to publish the Great American Novel or…
The Writers Group as Teacher: Lessons in Showing Up
A good writers group isn’t defined by rules. It isn’t defined by size. A writers group is working when it teaches you how to read and how to revise, and…
The Self-Taught Writer: Crafting a Bespoke Education
On the book tour for my debut novel, the question I was asked at every event was why I did not give up—even as it took me seven years to…
Writing the Libretto: The Art and Music of Poetic Collaboration
None of the tactical or financial considerations above matter much the first time you step into some old church somewhere, to hear, for the first time, a choir rehearse your…
Creating Without Fear: How to Quiet the Inner Critic Through Generative Writing
For over a decade I have participated in a group that meets once a month; typically there are five or six of us. Over the years we’ve honed this process…
Q&A: Youth Poet Laureate Daniel Umemezie
Daniel Umemezie is only beginning his undergraduate education at Iowa State University, where he plans to study aerospace engineering, but he takes with him a wealth of experience as a…
The Written Image: The In Gratitude Initiative
Inspired by Ross Gay and his poetry collection Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015), Just Buffalo Literary Center embarked on a six-month project this year to explore…
Small Press Points: Lost Kite Editions
“what becomes possible when writers directly impacted by incarceration are treated not as subjects or symbols, but as serious literary thinkers—with the taste, judgment, and vision to help decide what…
Redefining Canon From the Outside
“I’d like readers to think of the canon less as a monument and more as a conversation.” “Does this book complicate or enrich the story we think we know about…
Poetry and Public Lands
A poem can seem so small, so minor, so invisible, especially when up against the daily crises and catastrophes that our planet is facing,” writes Ada Limón, the former U.S.…