Tag: writing

The Dark Courage of “Writing Through Postpartum”

By Rachel Berg Scherer

I adored the process of having my first baby. I was so thankful to be pregnant, I loved labor, and I loved giving birth. It was overwhelmingly empowering and powerful and transformative. I would give birth every day for a month if it meant I didn’t have to live with a newborn again.

Writing, Meditation, and the Art of Looking

By Marilyn McCabe

I took a class to learn how to meditate. It didn’t go well. At least I didn’t keep falling asleep, like one guy did. I was always thinking about food. (This kind of stuff seems to have that effect on me — I took a yoga class some years ago, and all I could think about was: Is this over soon so I can go have a beer? And I don’t even really drink beer.)

Meditation, Writing, and the Act of Deep Internal Listening

By Jessie L. Benjamin

Meditation creates the space, writing fills the void. I’m called to both.
For twenty years, my daily sitting meditation practice has nourished me. It’s essential, like oxygen keeping me sane and, hopefully, kinder and more compassionate.

Writing as a Meditation Practice

By Elaine Fletcher Chapman

The year my mother died, I claimed a desk for myself in the family room. I placed my notebook and the books that were my touchstones at the time on the desk. I bought a beautiful fountain pen from pennies saved, ink made from roses.

Defining Diversity and Why #Black Lives Matter is a Statement of Unity

By Kathleen Aguero

he powerful grassroots movement, #BlackLivesMatter, is sometimes countered with the slogan “all lives matter.” Well, of course they do. That’s the point of #BlackLivesMatter—to demand we acknowledge the importance of lives, Black lives, too often treated as if they mattered not at all, with tragic results.

Creative Strategies for Supporting Writers with Mental Illness

By J.A. Grier

You know a writer with mental illness, even if you don’t realize it or know that person by name. Maybe the writer is a friend, or someone in your critique group, or someone you met at a writer’s convention. Maybe it’s someone you are working with on a publication.

Or maybe that writer is you.

An Interview with Martha Collins

By Danielle Legros Georges

Martha Collins is a poet, translator, the editor-at-large for Field Magazine, and an editor at Oberlin College Press. She is the author of the poetry volumes, Day Unto Day (Milkweed, 2014), White Papers (Pitt Poetry Series, 2012), Blue Front (Graywolf, 2006), Some Things Words Can Do (Sheep Meadow, 1998), A History of a Small Life on a Windy Planet (University of Georgia, 1993), The Arrangement of Space (Gibbs Smith,… Read more »

The Politics of Empathy

By Jennifer Jean

For over two years I’ve been researching and writing a poetry collection about sex-trafficking and objectification issues in America. When I give poetry readings there is always at least one person, if not more, from the audience who comes up to me and asks: “Why are you writing about this issue?” What I’ve discovered is,… Read more »

Talking Creative Nonfiction with Michael Steinberg

By David Fox

DF: In your craft essay “One Story, Two Narrators” included in the anthology SolLit Selects, you talk about how many personal essays and memoirs fall short, because they fail to create an internal narrative to accompany the surface-level events. Why do you think that so many aspiring nonfiction writers struggle with this? Also, you give some examples… Read more »

A Conversation with José Skinner

By Mariya Taher

MT: Your short story “The Edge” is included in SolLit Selects: Diverse Voices, the magazine’s first print anthology. Congratulations! Could you tell us what inspired you to write this story? JS: I’m fairly sure Russell Banks’s “Sarah Cole: A Type of Love Story” was the initial inspiration for “The Edge.” It’s been many years since… Read more »

Are we Doomed? The Risks of Writing about Family

By Amy Yelin

“When a writer is born into a family, the family is doomed,” -Czesław Miłosz I write a lot about family, my father in particular. You might say I’m obsessed with him. Not in the way I was obsessed with him as a child, when I was a daddy’s girl. Then he was simply larger… Read more »

Who are the Muses?

By Leonard Kress

Who but the Maenads, repentant, clothed, and in their right minds. (from Jane Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion) For a long time I’ve been searching for a way to describe my own poetic process that also explains what takes place inside me when I read certain poems. As far as… Read more »

The Undergrad Writer: Oh, So You Want to be a Teacher?

By Cassandra Capewell

Being an English major combines many of the things in life that I enjoy deep down to my core: I love reading, which is nice because most of my assignments are lengthy portions of text. I love writing, both creatively and academically, so hunkering down to bang out an eight-page paper, if I have enough… Read more »

It Takes as Long as it Takes: On Waiting

By Amy Yelin

Once upon a time, when I was a young twenty-something server at a restaurant just outside of Boston, my manager called me into his office. “Amy,” he said solemnly. “I need to tell you something. You’re not the stronger waiter.” “Um, I’m not a waiter,” I corrected him. “I’m a waitress.” Looking back, however, if… Read more »

Headline Poetry

By Leonard Kress

I was driving to work a few weeks ago, listening closely to a news report about the survivalist Eric Frein, who had just murdered a Pennsylvania State Trooper and managed to evade capture by hiding out in the dense forests of the Pocono Mountains. Although hundreds of people were engaged in a desperate and dramatic… Read more »

The Undergrad Writer: Really Bad Drafts