Aug 04, 2022
Can I Be a Writer if I Can’t Speak English Idiomatically?
If English is the only language that I can claim proficiency in, shouldn’t I be able to speak and write it idiomatically and well, even if it’s not my first language?
Writing as a Person of the Ear
How I’ve learned to write about my own experiences documenting the AIDS/HIV crisis as an oral historian.
Jul 07, 2022
On Writing with Chronic Migraines
How do you build a creative practice around chronic pain?
Jun 27, 2022
After Fifteen Years, I Stopped Panicking, Started Declawing, and Finally Published My Memoir
At last, I took my teachers’ and mentors’ advice, and scrutinized my own behavior more than anyone else’s.
Jun 16, 2022
How Stand-Up Comedy Helped Me Craft a Public Writer Persona
Writing my first jokes, I’d replaced my anxieties over the public-facing demands of an author career with a greater willingness to show up and be seen.
May 26, 2022
Finding My Authentic Voice as a Late-Diagnosed Autistic Writer
I had always used writing to try and make sense of myself, without realizing just how much of this was a way of processing a divergent experience of the world.
May 24, 2022
I Went to Medical School and Came Out a Writer
Literature and medicine are not opposed pursuits but rather one in the same endeavor to find sense in messy, human stories.
May 18, 2022
Can Fiction Help Solve the Ethical Problems of True Crime?
True crime wants us to believe that our monsters are individual, not systemic—the errant serial killer rather than a violent and inequitable culture.
May 12, 2022
What It Takes to Make a Living As a Working-Class Writer
I was often housing insecure; sometimes even homeless. I’ve had fewer opportunities to publish and I do so at a higher cost.
May 11, 2022
TLDR; I Tweeted Myself Into a Career and Now I’m Stuck Online
As part of our Social Media Week series, Leah Johnson writes about using social media to connect with her readers and how she engages online as a recreation rather than an obligation.
Apr 27, 2022
Why I Haven’t Invited Twitter Into my Writing Practice (a Thread)
As part of our Social Media Week series, Cinelle Barnes writes about being a writer and not being on Twitter.
Apr 25, 2022
Finding Literary Community by Making Bad Jokes on Twitter
As part of our Social Media Week series, Kristen Arnett writes about her journey on Twitter, the Hell App, and how she uses the platform to connect with other writers and try out bits.
Apr 25, 2022
Like Being a Good-Enough Mother, Being a Good-Enough Writer Is Enough
I love and care for my child unconditionally. Maybe I can do that for my writing too.
Apr 20, 2022
Writing Your Little Stories In the Shadow of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop
I was planting my cornfield, hoping that the magic baseball team (a.k.a my writing group) would eventually show up. If you build it, they will come.
Apr 18, 2022
Poems That Will Inspire You to Keep Writing
To celebrate National Poetry Month, we asked authors the question: “What poem or poet inspires you to keep writing?”
Apr 06, 2022
My Grandmother and I Never Saw Eye to Eye—Until I Wrote My Novel
When my Nai Nai asked me about the book, I felt compelled to tell her the truth: that I was scared, but that I was trying.
Apr 05, 2022
The City Writer Versus the Country Writer
Choosing one life means missing out on another; it is not possible to be everywhere all at once, to do everything, to be everyone.
Mar 24, 2022
Selling Books Helped Me Get My Groove Back
As I got better at articulating what customers should read and why, I was becoming equally capable of articulating what kinds of stories I wanted to write.
Mar 21, 2022
What to Do When Work Drains Your Creative Drive
It’s a bitter irony, courtesy of capitalism: writers working as writers to support the writing we are too spent to do.
Mar 14, 2022
“Prison Writer”: A Meditation on Histories and the Sentences that Create Them
From PEN America’s ‘The Sentences That Create Us Crafting A Writer’s Life in Prison.’
Feb 28, 2022
