What is writing for?
I confess that, after having taught creative writing for more than 35 years and read tons of student writing I don’t remember and tons of good and great books by good and great authors I also don’t remember, I sometimes find myself wondering if we really need any more new writing.
I’m writing to you today from the Amtrak quiet car, on a southbound train somewhere in New Jersey. Although the Amtrak Writer’s Residency Program is “currently evaluating the future of the program and do not have a timeline for when the next submission process will launch,” you can still pay out of pocket for a DIY Amtrak residency. That’s what I’ve been doing in 2017, now that my full-time teaching job is in Virginia and my fiancé is a theater director in New York.
I have an irrational fear of falling into a Japanese toilet—not an everyday worry, but one that poses itself as I pack for a weeklong research trip to a small town in Japan. I had knee surgery a few years ago and my squat technique is not what it used to be. My friend Reiko tells me it’s highly unlikely. I don’t tell her that I am the Queen of Unlikely. I tell her she’s right, and prepare for the worst.
It’s 94 degrees in Brooklyn, and I am writing in a pair of blue cashmere fingerless gloves. They are a gift from a dear friend – crafted from recycled goodness, and sent from Canada. They are also a shared talisman that connects me to my tribe: a group of women who inspire me, recognize me, […]
By Ron Heacock Descended at least culturally if not genetically from the ranks of our most exulted literary road warriors – writers like John Steinbeck, Jack Kerouac, and Ken Kesey – my wife Karen Walasek and I have exercised and exorcised our wanderlust cyclically throughout our forty year marriage. There have been many, many journeys […]
By Lucas M. Peters My polyglot wife is fond of telling me that as you are learning a new language, you are learning a new culture. Language, she says, is an extension of the culture of a place and its people. It is an unwieldy thing that has many strange branches and rules. It simultaneously […]
Victoria Nelson is in London this month!… Read her London Postcard: I am in London this month, staying in a spacious flat with dodgy plumbing in the Marylebone district of central London (this is the old station, not the flat): The weather has been gorgeous, tulips and daffodils are blooming in all the parks. This […]
by Kristen Stone One of the most amazing things about my Goddard experience (beside the invective to TRUST THE PROCESS, something I still wrestle with, on the daily, in my writing and non-writing lives) is the connections I made with writers—who became friends—around the country. One such friend is Kristen Nelson, founder and Executive Director […]
Michelle writes: “The week has gifted me with numerous pleasures. The best being an opportunity to ask a few questions of a fellow writer and Goddard graduate, Sarah Shellow. Her words always give me a sense of healing and I very much would like to share them with all of you. Thank you and enjoy.” […]
by Nicola Morris I love small collections of books… a hotel shelf of books, a “free library” on the side of the street that has popped up with a tiny collection, some books left at the laundromat. Here in New Zealand I went off to the library to find some New Zealand fiction. I found […]
