Innehållsförteckning för August/September 2022 från The Writer

AROUND THIS TIME OF YEAR, MY freezer begins to look like something out of Stranger Things. The door groans under the weight of the salmon spines, marrow bones, pork jowls, and chicken organs; the light flickers feebly behind stacks of blood-red tomato sauce and ghostly parmesan rinds. One wrong move amidst the heaps of unidentifiable vegetables could very well send you into the Upside Down. Every harvest morning finds me pleading with the aging appliance, begging its weary, overstuffed contents to accept just one more head of cauliflower from the garden, just one more batch of roasted cherry tomatoes before the first frost arrives in earnest. In Alaska, we joke we don’t mind the dark of winter because it finally lets us get some damn sleep. But I find even…

FOR THE PAST FOUR DECADES, LINda Joy Myers – memoirist and president of the National Association of Memoir Writers – has worked as a therapist. She’s the author of The Power of Memoir: How to Write Your Healing Story and a staunch advocate of writing book-length memoir with all the therapeutic benefits the practice provides. “When you write a scene, you become your own character at an earlier time in your life walking through and reliving those scenes. When you do that, you put your life into a new perspective because you’re the narrator, and you’re the character in the scene at the same time,” she explains. “When we figure out how to begin our memoir, how to develop the middle, and how the story – but not our life…

THE WORD “SOLARPUNK” REFERS TO a genre of speculative fiction informed by equity, community, optimism, and – frequently – the natural world; think Frank Herbert’s Dune and Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. Solarpunk Magazine is a bimonthly publication featuring idealistic short stories, poetry, nonfiction, and art. As editors write on the magazine’s website, “the time has never been more urgent for an explosion of utopian stories to light a path forward out of the darkness into which humanity has dug itself.” This is a magazine about hope, informed by its subtitle: “Demand utopia.” Here, you’ll find stories about blimps powered by chlorophyllectrics (“Tillandsia” by Josie Kallo, Issue #2) and harmonious settlements rich with plant life (“The Last of the Mbahuku Tribe” by Oyedotun Damilola, Issue #1). You’ll also find…

When I was in college, I took a class on French Caribbean literature. For a long time, then, that’s what Caribbean literature was to me: French. I’m a lot older now, though, and a long chat with Professor Tanya Shields at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill has set me further straight. Her class, “Rahtid Rebel Women: An Intro to Caribbean Women,” covers everything from literature to cooking and was named as one of Elle Magazine’s “63 College Classes That Give Us Hope for the Next Generation.” We talked about intersectionality, women’s studies, and so much more. The Writer: Let’s start at the beginning. How do we define Caribbean literature? Dr. Tanya Shields: I think this definitional question is one that haunts the field, and I would say it…

Remember parties? Writing fiction is a little like hosting a party, with the reader as a new friend you’re bringing into your home. Your job, as the writer, is to host the party: make sure everyone is supplied with food and drink, show them around, keep the conversation going with snappy dialogue and intrigue, remind everyone there’s an end-point, and then see everyone out the door, satisfied. But first, you have to get the guest to want to come in the door. And that’s where your first line – which can extend to the first paragraph – comes in. It’s crucial to get the opening of a story, whether it’s a 400-page novel or a 500-word work of flash fiction, just right so that the reader wants to stay in…

I was in my 40s when I became aware that I wanted to write for an audience beyond just myself. I had stories and books I wanted to create, but was unable to accomplish what I was able to envision. That’s when I decided to get my MFA. The good news about being in an MFA program at that age is I was completely committed to the hard work of learning every bit of craft I could. The downside of being in my 40s (I graduated at 49) was I was much older than all of my classmates, several of whom made it clear they resented my presence in the classroom. The workshops were sometimes exhilarating and sometimes gut-wrenching. I would polish and polish and polish my little stories, hoping…

Surely by now you’ve heard of Wordle, the word game that became such a sensation it was bought by the New York Times for a cool $7 million. But have you heard of Phrazle, which asks players to guess a common phrase in six tries, or Octordle, in which a user tries to solve eight Wordles at once? For a bigger challenge, try Semantle, an impossible (and addicting) game that asks players to guess the word of the day based on semantic similarity, or Redactle, which has users guess the title of a common Wikipedia article by filling in the “redacted” words in the article’s text. If your TBR pile feels stale – or you’re just always hungry to find new titles – check out Shepherd (shepherd.com), which features hyper-specific…

NO matter what genre a writer specializes in – suspense or fantasy, plays or picture books – they all have something in common: devotion to craft. Writing craft serves as a catchall for the elements involved in creating a story. We bake craft into every decision we make as writers, and yet so few hard-and-fast rules exist to guide us. Craft becomes what you make of it, from developing characters to refining a turn of phrase to speeding up the pace of a critical scene. You can hone your craft for decades and still have things to learn. Yet you can also bask in the momentary contentment of switching out an adverb for an adjective to make a sentence sing. We wanted to learn from authors who excel at their…

American Gypsy: a Memoir BY OKSANA MARAFIOTI The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South BY MICHAEL W. TWITTY Flying Free: My Victory Over Fear to Become the First Latina Pilot on the US Aerobatic Team BY CECILIA ARAGON A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings: A Year of Keeping Bees BY HELEN JUKES The Master Plan: My Journey from Life in Prison to a Life of Purpose BY CHRIS WILSON Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over BY NELL PAINTER Once I Was You: A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America BY MARIA HINOJOSA Tastes Like War BY GRACE M. CHO Uncovered: How I Left Hasidic Life and Finally Came Home BY LEAH LAX…

Memory Into Memoir: A Writer’s Handbook BY LAURA KALPAKIAN “The memoir is not the story of what you know, it’s the story of how you learned it,” explains author and instructor Laura Kalpakian in this guide, which won the Gold Medal for Writing/Publishing at the Independent Publisher Book Awards. Chapter topics range from navigating memoir beginnings and scenic details to rendering remembered dialogue and narrative voice. “Anyone beginning a memoir – or floundering about in the middle or even toward the end – will thank their lucky stars to get Laura Kalpakian’s guide in their hands,” praises author Priscilla Long. Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative BY MELISSA FEBOS Melissa Febos examines the act of storytelling in this “mix of memoir and master class” on personal narratives. In…

LIKE MANY OTHERS, KAREN EDmonds began writing a novel in the midst of the pandemic. But she wrote it with the assistance of award-winning authors teaching for Stanford University’s Online Certificate Program in Novel Writing. “I liked the fact that it was laser-focused on novel writing and geared towards debut authors,” Edmonds says. “I liked that it was all online, so you could do it around your schedule.” Her novel is a fictionalized account of the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge that took place near Burns, Oregon, in early 2016. She studied with one cohort her entire two years in the program, workshopping their novel chapters and receiving critiques on her own rough drafts. “You’re going through this experience with a whole group of people who are all…

“Storytelling is about two things; it’s about character and plot.”— GEORGE LUCAS Writing a novel is a huge challenge. Not only must you create relatable, compelling characters who grab readers, but you also need to nail down a storyline that does the same thing. Readers want adept storytelling, with scenes that move, lives that change – and they want to know why. In short, they want a plot. Plot is the causal connection between story events. One thing leads to another, causes another. Plot is hooked right into your protagonist’s character arc. But how do you create a plot that fully engages readers? That pulls them in and won’t let them go? We turned to six well-published novelists for their ideas and suggestions. WHAT MAKES A GOOD PLOT? ARE there…

PRODUCTIVITY & FOCUS Cold Turkey Most distraction blockers (programs that prevent you from visiting predesignated sites) come with built-in workarounds. Not Cold Turkey, which allows users to “lock the block” for a set amount of time or circumstances. Choose to only be able to unlock the extension by restarting your computer, for example, or by typing in a set series of randomized characters, ranging in customizable length from one to 99 characters. In other words, if you want to unlock this distraction blocker, be prepared to work for it. FREE FOR BASIC USE; $20 FOR PREMIUM. getcoldturkey.com Freedom What if you’ve learned the quickest way to get around any distraction blocker on your desktop is to pick up your phone, tablet, or laptop? Freedom allows you to block websites and…

For regular doses of digital tools like the ones found here, consider subscribing to Jane Friedman’s helpful Electric Speed newsletter (janefriedman.com/electric-speed) – free since Friedman started it in 2009 – or Jeremy Caplan’s excellent Wonder Tools newsletter, also free and found at wondertools.substack.com. Other considerations include the Society of Professional Journalists’ The Journalist’s Toolbox (journaliststoolbox.substack.com) or Creativerly (creativerly.com/tag/newsletter).…

Jewell Parker Rhodes and Kelly McWilliams share more than just a talent for words and storytelling. They are a mother and daughter who have both published books to acclaim. McWilliams says her mother has been “a source of constant guidance and mentorship” who encouraged her to read widely as a child. “It was never a question for me of, ‘oh, can women write books, can Black girls grow up to write books?’” McWilliams says. “She was always out there doing that.” Of course, mother and daughter have differing styles. “My mom never had much tolerance for the mushier aspects of being a young writer,” McWilliams laughs. “She writes political books, activist books. I’d be like, ‘what about this flowery phrase or image?’ And she’d say, ‘Honestly, it doesn’t matter. You…

My memoir in essays, detailing my life as an adopted, biracial Japanese American, began as my MFA thesis back in the early ’90s. My plan was to take a year post-graduation to polish up the manuscript, send it out to agents, and have it snatched up by a publisher. If you had told me then that my book wouldn’t be published for another 30 years, I’m not sure what I would have done. Perhaps I should have listened more carefully to my thesis advisor, Sheila. After congratulating me on the successful completion of my 90-page manuscript, Sheila offered, gently, that perhaps the book “wasn’t ready to be out in the world yet.” I vaguely recall her using words like “premature,” “needs time to marinate,” and “distance.” I was indignant. Furious,…

Upcoming calls for submissions Creative Nonfiction: Sunday Short Reads submissions Editors of Creative Nonfiction seek previously unpublished submissions for their “Sunday Short Read” email, which features works of nonfiction under 1,000 words. A $3 reading fee is waived for subscribers of Creative Nonfiction and/or True Story. Payment: $50. Submit by Aug. 1. creativenonfiction.org/submissions Prairie Schooner: Summer Creative Nonfiction Contest Send imaginative essays of general interest under 5,000 words to Prairie Schooner for consideration in its annual summer nonfiction contest. This year’s guest judge is award-winning author Jerald Walker. The winning entry will receive $500 and publication. Submit by Aug. 1. prairieschooner.submittable.com West Trade Review: Fiction, creative nonfiction, poems West Trade Review editors welcome short fiction (up to 5,000 words), poetry (up to five poems), creative nonfiction (personal essays, memoir, literary…

A VCR TAPE OF JANE FONDA’S WORKOUT from the 1980s. An orange finger puppet in the shape of an octopus tentacle. A black and silver artificial larynx. Visitors to the Instagram journal The Keepthings can see and read about all of these objects…plus so many more. Deborah Way was an editor at O, the Oprah Magazine for 15 years, until the print magazine closed. In April 2021, she launched The Keepthings with the subtitle “stories of the things we keep to keep our dear dead with us.” She asks potential contributors to submit the story of an object and the person it’s connected to in 600 words or fewer, along with photos of the object. “I think of them as love stories told through objects,” Way says. “Some of them…

Cuban-American writer Vanessa Garcia is a literal tour de force. Everything she touches becomes something bigger than its original implication. I know because meeting her gave me the impetus I needed to sign with the same small press where she published her debut novel. Being around her is like sitting in the eye of a storm of projects, all of which are experiencing their own moments of movement: her immersive experience, Amparo, ran in Miami to great acclaim before moving onto Instagram; her posts about Cuban independence have been lighting up her social media feeds, and her latest project is a picture book (What the Bread Says: Baking with Love, History, and Papan), due out from Cardinal Rule Press in October. Even after signing with Cardinal Rule, Garcia wasn’t done;…

ADRIANNE FINLAY “Give your characters tough choices that challenge their personal life, their identity, and their worldview, preferably all at once.” STEPHANIE COWELL “Listen to your characters and let them do as they wish. Follow them. Their life journey will make your plot. The plot grows out of who they are and will thus be utterly real.” LAUREN B. DAVIS “Trust your characters to shape your plot. Plot unfolds because of who they are, what they yearn for, why they can’t get it, and what happens when they either attain their hearts’ yearning or fail to attain it.” GRANT TRACEY “Always look for the inner story. What does your lead character want? What are they willing to do to get it?” ELIZABETH SPANN CRAIG “If your protagonist is the same…

Many writers rely on stock imagery to illustrate their blogs, newsletters, articles, etc. But stock libraries are often heavily dominated by images of cis white straight people without disabilities. These resources can help writers populate their words with imagery that better reflects the diverse society we live in: Black Illustrations offers a set of 30+ digital designs of Black people, all of which are free for personal and commercial use, although content creators can also donate any amount of their choosing to receive the illustrations and support Black Illustrations. Premium illustration packs (starting at $9) and subscriptions (starting at $89/quarter) are also available. After releasing a report that “found that stock image libraries often use unrealistically positive or negative depictions of people in later life,” the Centre for Ageing Better…