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May 31, 2016
Writing What’s Closest to Home
Last year, when I turned in the first draft of a memoir on rape trauma, my editor had a pretty reasonable observation. Despite divulging various details of violation, illness, and the path to getting ...
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July 20, 2017
writing with dyslexia
I could not really read until I was about eight. I have a distinct memory from 1977-- around June-- when I was sitting in my elementary school class watching other kids read. I had just transferred schools ...
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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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May 12, 2022
Writing Within the Cracks
May is always a busy month for me. We have several May birthdays, summer to prepare for, and the usual sort of unexpected situations to deal with. Why, in this month alone, I have had to submit a first ...
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March 29, 2021
Writing/Not Writing
Some language cracks the shell of a thing open, so we can newly see what’s being described. And some language forms a perfect egg shell around what it aims to describe, obscuring more than it reveals. ...
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November 02, 2020
Written and On-Screen Selves: On Diaries and Social Media
Do you remember your first diary?Mine was a baby blue hardcover with a cute little rhyme on it that I still remember to this day:People, places, faces. My life in words and phrases. All I've thought ...
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April 25, 2024
Yilin Wang Curates a Crucial Anthology of Sinophone Poetry with The Lantern and the Night Moths
While the work of Tang Dynasty Classical Chinese poets such as Li Bai, Du Fu, and Wang Wei has long been celebrated in China, and throughout the world, there are key texts that add to this tradition that have ...
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September 25, 2018
YOSS in 2018—and Beyond
It amazes and annoys me that short stories don’t get more respect.There is a certain face that too many literary agents and publishing people make when you mention short-story collections.<iframe ...
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March 17, 2014
You Are God
Writing is all on the page. Take most other arts: film, music, painting, and what goes into the making of each – the processes, the materials, the effort, are not obvious, are not laid out bare. There’s ...
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March 21, 2023
You didn’t get a grant…now what?
It’s grant notice season, and while some writers will be happy dancing all over their kitchens (if you are one of them, this column is for you!), some of us, well, won’t be dancing in the kitchen. ...