Innehållsförteckning för July 2016 från The Writer

Heading home from my very first writing conference, I tucked myself into the window seat of an early flight back to Boston. Buckled my seatbelt, pulled out a stack of literary journals I’d bought at the book fair and pulled my coat-blanket up to my chin. A large middleaged man with an unruly beard and a balding ponytail stuffed himself into the seat next to me. I smiled weakly. He smiled back. We spent the entire trip back reading poetry together. It was the best flight I’d ever had. Writing conferences boast jam-packed itineraries of panels, readings and workshops, and it would be foolish not to take advantage of them. But your hometown bookstore hosts readings and signings. Your local university offers classes and workshops. A city writing center or…

What’s the difference between MG and YA? Middle grade (MG) and young adult (YA) are two of the fastest growing sectors in publishing. An agent may turn down an MG or YA submission if it isn’t pitched correctly or straddles genres, so if you’re writing MG or YA, you’ll want to know the basics. The terms “middle grade” and “young adult” describe audiences, not the story. Typically, the readers of MG fall into the 8-12 age group, with YA grabbing readers from 12 to 18. Keep in mind that readers read up, so a 13-year-old protagonist may interest a 10-year-old. However, age is only one defining characteristic of these genres. In MG, the main action is external. Things happen; the main character reacts. The plot is typically adventurous. The main…

“A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will's freedom after it.” —Aldous Huxley ▸ ALMONDS Almonds are a powerhouse conference food. They’re packed with fiber, protein and monounsaturated fat, all three of which stave off hunger cravings – perfect if you’re trying to power through a lunchtime panel and your stomach is growling. Blue Diamond’s bagged almonds are lightweight, resealable and come in a variety of flavors. $21 for 32 bags. Bluediamond.com ▸ DARK CHOCOLATE By the end of a long conference day, you may need some extra motivation to power through your last session. Treat yourself to a small square of dark chocolate when your brain power runs low. You’ve earned it. Endangered Species chocolates are fair trade, and a portion…

INSIDE LITERARY MAGAZINES This is how emerging writer Kathryn Miller begins her personal essay for The Rumpus, published on December 10, 2015. I was shot when I was seven years old, in a school shooting, along with five other kids, in an affluent suburb of Chicago. The shooter was a thirtyyear-old woman I didn’t know. No one she shot knew her. Since then, I’ve seen shooters everywhere. Marisa Siegel, managing editor for the seven-year old literary website, says Miller’s piece “Without Boundaries or Beginnings or Ends” took her breath away. “Gun violence in America is a political issue I’ve felt pretty strongly about for a very long time, although I’ve never had a personal connection to it,” she says. “Our country’s reluctance to do anything in the way of gun…

Fifty-five percent of YA books are bought by adults, reported the American Publishers Association in 2015. NAME David Cain YEARS BLOGGING 7 GENRE The human experience WEBSITE raptitude.com Your blog is on the “human experience” – has there ever been anything you wanted to write about that didn’t fit under that umbrella? I would like to write about my thoughts on certain films, shows, music acts, sporting events and video games. I don’t want to review them, just share my thoughts on what they mean to me. Often my thoughts do relate to the more general topic of human experience but still aren’t appropriate for Raptitude. On Raptitude, I sometimes touch on my niche interests to make a broader point about human beings, but that broader point has to be…

The writing universe is filled with festivals, conferences, workshops and book fairs. Which are truly worth the hype (and the registration fees)? Writer Jennifer Mattson shares her top 10 must-go-to conferences for writers, taking conference size, geographical locations, topics and experience levels into account. No matter your background, your interests or your budget, there’s a conference on this list for you. 1The Muse and the Marketplace Grub Street, a writing center in Boston, holds its annual conference at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel for three days each spring. The weekend draws over 140 well-known authors, literary agents, editors and publishers. (Disclaimer: I teach online classes for Grub Street.) Past faculty: Charles Baxter, Colum McCann, Roxanne Gay Why you should go: It’s a large conference with more than 800 people on…

What is the most valuable resource for teaching writing? There is, of course, no single go-to work, but invariably, every instructor has a favorite. We asked four writing teachers to tell us theirs – and why they return to it year after year. Name: Gayle Brandeis Teaches at: Sierra Nevada College Course: Creative Non-Fiction Workshop Recommended text: Bluets by Maggie Nelson What writers can learn from it: Bluets is a lyric meditation on the color blue; it’s a slim volume, but it holds so much – memoir, philosophy, art, science. Written in short, numbered fragments, the book breaks open preconceived ideas of form: It shows students they are not confined to the traditional Aristotelian narrative arc; it shows them they can create their own structures to hold the shape of their memory,…

WriterMag.com Subscribers to The Writer have online access to information on publishers, publications, conferences, contests and agents. Go to WriterMag.com and click on Writing Resources. Information in this section is provided to The Writer by the individual markets and events; for more information, contact those entities directly. »CONFERENCES, RETREATS, FESTIVALS (JULY – DECEMBER) ARIZONA ALTA Conference Oakland, CA, Oct. 6-9. The 39th ALTA Conference will have the theme “Translation & Crossings,” which will examine the linguistic transfer that occurs in translation between language and culture. ALTA hopes to create a platform to openly discuss translation as a process, and will include sessions, readings and keynote speakers. Contact: American Literary Translators Association. Managing Director Erica Mena, erica@literarytranslators.org literarytranslators.org CALIFORNIA La Jolla Writer’s Conference San Diego, California, Nov. 11-13. Learn about the…

Poet Terrance Hayes is best known for his 2010 collection Lighthead, which won the National Book Award for poetry. He is the author of four other award-winning poetry collections, most recently How to Be Drawn, which was published in 2015. Hayes is also the recipient of multiple honors, including a Whiting Award, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a 2014 MacArthur fellowship. His poems have appeared in publications including The New Yorker and The Best American Poetry anthology series and he is a member of the English faculty at the University of Pittsburgh. WHAT’S THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU’VE LEARNED ABOUT WRITING? I’ve learned that writing never gets easy. When the work is hard (emotionally, intellectually, creatively) you have to work hard (emotionally, intellectually, creatively). Maybe it’s akin to sports:…

A Manner of Being features musings from poets and writers on their mentors, edited by Annie Liontas and Jeff Parker. Both a heartwarming collection of profiles on some of the most influential figures in modern literature (including Mary Jo Salter, Gore Vidal, Elizabeth Hardwick, Raymond Carver and John Irving) and a treasure chest of advice on craft shared between teacher and apprentice, this book will have you fondly remembering your own writing mentors. Romance novelist and gender and culture studies professor Catherine Roach dissects the romance narrative in Happily Ever After. A book that will captivate academics, romance writers and fans alike, it helps us think more deeply about the most widely read genre of literature in the world. Writing well produces a great story, right? Wrong, according to Lisa…

ONE OF THE best things that Elmaz Abinader, one of my first writing mentors, ever did was to encourage me to attend my first writing conference. “These are our people,” she said. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized that I could be a legitimate member of this passionate community – that I, a beginner, could join a group of real writers. A storm of anxious thoughts flooded my mind: Would I be called out as a novice? Would I feel self-conscious, lonely or embarrassed? As it turned out, none of my fears came to pass, and instead, I found inspiration and support at that Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference in Tempe, Arizona. Decades later, I still get excited when I register for a writing conference. Here are…

LYDIA IS DEAD. But they don’t know this yet. 1977, May 3, six thirty in the morning, no one knows anything but this innocuous fact: Lydia is late for breakfast. As always, next to her cereal bowl, her mother has placed a sharpened pencil and Lydia’s physics homework, six problems flagged with small ticks. Driving to work, Lydia’s father nudges the dial toward WXKP, Northwest Ohio’s Best News Source, vexed by the crackles of static. On the stairs, Lydia’s brother yawns, still twined in the tail end of his dream. And in her chair in the corner of the kitchen, Lydia’s sister hunches moon-eyed over her cornflakes, sucking them to pieces one by one, waiting for Lydia to appear. It’s she who says, at last, “Lydia’s taking a long time…

Kirstin Valdez Quade has gained much attention and praise for her short story collection, Night at the Fiestas. Although it may seem like she’s an overnight success, Quade actually worked on the book for nearly a decade. After all that time, she’s found it exciting to “have it be an actual object in the world, something outside of me.” Quade has taught at several universities and will be teaching at Princeton later this year. She enjoys engaging with students just as she also appreciates interacting with those who have read her work. “I’m always thrilled when a reader tells me my book has resonated with them.” Although she says she’s “superstitious about talking about work in progress,” she did share that she’s working on a novel. Anyone who has enjoyed…

You can't find this in print. In The Gift, Lewis Hyde calls creativity a gift “bestowed upon the self.” He adds, “men or women must work to perfect their gifts.” Implicit in this point of view is that one is either gifted or not. Hyde is wary of the marketplace in which while attempting to sell work, the artist will compromise his or her art. When I graduated with an MFA from the University of Montana in 1976, most of us who wrote shared this mindset: It was all about the art. No one mentioned networking. Marketing meant selling out. We had our role models: Kerouac, Ginsberg, Bly, Kesey, Thompson—successful writers who rebelled against the system. They sold books and filled auditoriums with fans. Those days, you got a job…