Writing Archive
America RePunked: A Vision of the Next Four Years in Art
But I begin by asking: Is the anti-establishment nature of the punk ethos going to make its second coming in our art over the next four years?
Grant Faulkner and NaNoWriMo
Faulkner believes everyone has a story to tell and that every story matters. Whether someone is writing a dissertation, a news article, a memoir, or a novel, they are telling a story. Participating in NaNoWriMo and writing a novel teaches you about forming narratives and storytelling.
Baltimore School Students Write in Protest and Celebration
Writers in Baltimore Schools, the creative writing organization I run for Baltimore youth, has developed a protocol for mobilizing safe spaces for writing after trauma. We were unfortunately ready when Donald Trump was elected the 45th President of the United States. On Thursday, fifteen of us gathered to write
How to Be an Explorer: Field Notes from NYC
The Explorer’s Club was founded in New York City in 1904 by Arctic explorers in a grand building with a placard and serious gates. If you stalk their website as I do, you will see several events a year that are open to non-Explorers.
Songs that are Perfect Short Stories: Using Repetition
Some of the most effective short stories are by songwriters. The constraints and conventions of a five-minute pop song can structure a narrative in ways that, even before you get to the music, are incredibly moving.
Why Write Short Stories?
Much like our lives, short stories are brief and end abruptly. They summon entire worlds in just a few pages and then bow out, with startling precision and compression. It is a delicate balance, and such delicate work requires small hands.
The Female Gaze and the Same Old Songs
I recently went with my husband to a concert. The artist we saw writes gut-wrenching songs, and he and his band put on a great show. But I got restless about half way through. “It’s just so masculine,” I said to my husband, and not long after that the
Space: Renegotiating Rhetorical Boundaries
In the aftermath of this election, it’s undeniable this country is a contested space, and that its citizens are hungry for new language to describe its landscape and reshape its boundaries. Within contemporary poetry, many writers of color are responding to this desire by renegotiating the rhetoric of the
Alternatives to Blast Open the Forms of Nonfiction
Today’s nonfiction writers have at hand a number of forms other than the essay and the memoir. There’s the flash essay, of course, and literary journalism. Then there’s the catch-all form of nonfiction known as the lyric essay. So, what do they all mean?
The Mango Story: Beyond the Asian Stereotype
For a nonfiction food writer, the mango provides an endless mine of stories. For those living in Asia and immigrants in other countries, eating mangoes is so visceral, so memorable an experience that the significance of eating them often transcends mere flavor. Mango then becomes a metaphor.