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…
Five Things Fan Fic
Five Things... is a fanfiction writing form or structure that originated in Smallville fandom in 2001 with the fic Five Things That Aren't True by Basingstoke. The format requires a…
The Five Things Essay
An all-purpose writing prompt to help you find your voice, lose your voice, beat writer's block, or figure out what the hell you want to write about in the first…
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…
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…
Interview with Curtis Brown Literary Agent, Lily Kovacs
A Conversation with Lily Kovacs (literary agent over at our prize partner Curtis Brown) about the literary world today, indie publishing, how writers find agents, how agents find writers, the…
Imaginary Worlds: Is Money Ruining Fanfiction?
The world of fanfiction has changed a lot since our 2017 episode, Fanfiction (Don’t Judge.) At the time, I thought that 50 Shades of Gray – the novel that began…