August 19, 2019
To See How It’s Made: An Interview with Margot Livesey, Author of The Hidden Machinery
This post is the seventh in a months-long series that explores the topic of craft: what it is, how it has evolved, who has historically had access to it, and […]
July 12, 2019
So That’s How You Do It: An Interview with Michael Noll, Author of The Writer’s Field Guide to the Craft of Fiction
This post is the second in a months-long series that explores the topic of craft: what it is, how it has evolved, who has historically had access to it, and […]
May 13, 2019
“What Are You Doing?” and Other Questions to Ask Your Characters
In my second year of graduate school, I attended a reading by Charles Baxter, who was at that time a visiting professor at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. This was in […]
April 20, 2019
On Slow Reading, Considering, and Consuming
It’s long been understood that going to an art museum doesn’t necessarily mean one desires to look at art, at least not for prolonged, potentially edifying periods. Articles like Artnet’s […]
June 18, 2018
What is it About Some Writing that Makes Us Gasp?
What is that sharp inhale, then heart flutter, then shot of warmth, then some kind of quiet in me when I read genius writing, that high I stalk again and […]
September 15, 2017
Reading Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark After Charlottesville
As someone who teaches literature post-Charlottesville (and everything else), I felt it was an important time to revisit Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination […]
August 18, 2017
An Interview with Poetry Teacher Extraordinaire, Marty Skoble
The extremely humble Marty Skoble has single-handedly created a new generation of poets and writers. He was my poetry teacher from fifth grade to twelfth grade at St. Ann’s School. […]
July 20, 2017
Eating the World
Parenting literature says that we should read to our newborns from the very beginning. Exposure to music is also supposed to support cognitive development, even in the womb, but I […]
July 5, 2017
A Writer’s Romance with Screens
When I can’t put my finger on what I’m feeling, I want to Shazam it or press Control+F, and then I realize I’m turning into a machine. In Adrienne Rich’s […]
June 20, 2017
Strippers and Lost Tampons: In Defense of Women’s “Personal” Writing
A New Yorker article recently declared the death of the personal essay, but I won’t be attending the funeral. The article’s author, Jia Tolentino, identifies personal writing with women and […]
June 12, 2017
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Publishing* But Were Afraid to Ask
To writers, editors and agents are like unicorns, magical beasts that hold the key to the publishing kingdom. My writer friends and I spend so much time speculating about these […]
May 3, 2017
Margaret Atwood and The Speculative in Poetry
Online and in person, it feels like everyone’s talking about The Handmaid’s Tale, the ten-episode television series based on Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel of the same name, first published in 1985. […]