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December 22, 2016
On Writing, with Tim McCaskell
Tim McCaskell drew on decades of experience as an activist to write Queer Progress: From Homophobia to Homonationalism (Between the Lines Books), which explores both the progress of LGBTQ activism and ...
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August 01, 2017
Oh hey, it’s me. Your old friend, Naseem.
I’ll be your writer-in-residence for August. I’m a first-time author and a former librarian, and I’ve worked in children’s publishing for over ten years. I’m a huge fan of improv, stand-up comedy, ...
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February 16, 2019
Poetry School: Denise Levertov on form as a revelation
After reading poet Denise Levertov’s 1965 essay “Some Notes on Organic Form,” I had a revelation: I write poetry mainly in organic form. Given that the notion of the work of art as a self-germinating ...
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October 05, 2016
How To Make a Great Book Cover
The most important lesson I learned when I self-published my first book was that readers do judge a book by its cover. This is often framed as negative but as author and illustrator Annie Mok recently ...
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June 19, 2021
On Writing Essentials
Much as I admire highly regimented and disciplined writers, that's simply not me. Believe me, I've tried! However, no matter how unstructured my writing day might be, there are five essentials that I ...
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February 16, 2022
"I’ve Read What I’ve Wanted... No Regrets" Ayaz Pirani on the Books That Shaped Him, from S.E. Hinton to Kabir
Ayaz Pirani's third poetry collection, How Beautiful People Are (Gordon Hill Press) builds on his reputation as a meditative, skillful, and wise writer rooted in the Indian ginan poetic tradition. Capturing ...
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January 06, 2017
Writing Through Pain
Carlyn Zwarenstein, in Opium Eater: The New Confessions, fuses memoir, reflective inquiry, cultural journalism, and literary investigation to look at opiates and what they have done for her. She is a ...
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February 08, 2019
Poetry School: Keeping it real with Wordsworth
Lyric poetry. We say it casually, but what does it mean? The musical connotation is there, even if we don’t accompany our lyric poems with music. An inherent music, then. The lifts and falls. Rhythm. ...
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June 10, 2022
Writing with kids: Impossible or sometimes maybe possible?
Summer is nigh, which means picnics and sunlight until 10 p.m. and swimming pools and watermelon. And it also means my kids are going to be around a lot more, and finding windows to write is going to ...
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September 14, 2023
The Pull of Two Needles
My first version of this essay was about how my two obsessions, knitting and writing, don’t compete with each other. I wrote at length about how they spin together in my brain in complicated steps, ...