Dead Book Walking
I’m writing a book that will probably never get published. Not because it’s a bad book, necessarily, though it may be, but because it’s a book about people trying to escape the kind of broken country we might end up…
Category: Writing vs. Living
Letting Go of Attachments
I am an expert at cleaning out my closet. I have been pushed by circumstance to get rid of many of my possessions again and again. But when it comes to my words—I’m not as talented. I have been thinking…
Exploring Character Through Memoir
Fiction readers expect more of characters than they do of people in real life. In life you can have a person who does inexplicable self-destructive or transgressive shit, and friends and colleagues just shake their heads and say, “Oh, that’s…
Four Writing Struggles of Abuse Survivors
Abuse kind of fucks up your head. Anybody who’s been there will tell you that. And while we survivors can respond to the injustices done upon us in a myriad of ways, I’ve noticed a significant ratio of us seem…
The Supplemental Courses that Writers REALLY Need
A Message from the Writing Program Director It has become abundantly clear to us that in order to prepare for their careers, our students require more than simply writing workshops and literature classes. To this end, we have developed the…
Word Problems for Writers
1. You have 20 minutes to write before your child wakes up, or you have to go to work, or your cat finally chews through your computer’s power cord. You turn on your computer and see that you have 5…