August 6, 2019
Playing the Long Game: An Interview with Anne Valente
In 2014, when I was studying in Bowling Green State University’s MFA program, I helped coordinate Winter Wheat: The Mid-American Review Festival of Writing. Our keynote speaker that year […]
May 30, 2019
Let It Be: In Memory of Wendell Mayo
Before sitting down to write this blog post, I went to the bookcase in my writing room and pulled out a tiny cloth sack of worry dolls. I hadn’t […]
September 11, 2018
Luck, Lit, & Gutter Spouts
I was twenty-three years old when I won the Hopwood Award for Poetry. A recent college grad, I lived in a leaky apartment that I’d furnished with lawn furniture and […]
May 31, 2018
Should Fiction Writers Study Literary Theory?
In her 2010 review of Mark McGurl’s The Program Era, Elif Batuman makes the following observation: a schism has opened up between literary scholarship and creative writing: disciplines which differ in […]
March 10, 2016
Straddling the MFA Divide
Whenever I come across yet another article discussing the merits (or lack thereof) of MFA programs, something inside me dies. Or maybe it yawns. Again and again, I’ve read the […]
February 27, 2016
Something to Say: Coming to Writing Later in Life
My ukulele teacher told me to stop being so nervous. Has anyone ever told you to stop feeling nervous? It’s an impossible directive to follow, especially if you’re not actually […]
September 2, 2015
The Daniel Swiftboating of Helen Vendler
The knives are out again for Helen Vendler. In a recent review for The Spectator, Daniel Swift accuses the poetry critic of performing a bloodless “scientific evaluation of literature.” Her […]
March 28, 2014
MFA vs. Banana
Would you like to attend a parade in honor of chapbooks this weekend? If you are near Amherst, MA, you can do so as part of the 50th Anniversary Celebration […]
September 22, 2011
Mix Tape: Genius (Comedy and Otherwise)
Ok, so you’re not a genius. Let that sink in for a minute. Now shake it off and enjoy reading about people who are. A laugh-out-loud funny look at the […]
September 21, 2010
Wishes and Whips
What is wrong with books? What is wrong with me that I so love reading about what’s wrong with the stuff I love? When I see links cropping up on […]