Category: Writing
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William Zinsser’s Words Changed Writing
William Zinsser passed away on Tuesday, May 12, 2015, at the age of 92. Zinsser was a writer, editor, and teacher. He wrote 19 books, the most well-known being On Writing Well. Zinsser used his love of writing and teaching to create a book that would help others develop the craft. My first lesson from…
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Notes on the Rule of Three
I. Conflict Writers are taught there is magic in the number three: your play needs three acts, your joke needs two priests and a rabbi, and your storybook needs Three Little Pigs to be complete. If that book was called The Forty-Seven Little Pigs, I guess there wouldn’t be much of a story at all…
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A Writerly Farewell to Ned Vizzini
Writer Ned Vizzini took his life yesterday at the age of 32. News of this tragedy fills my Facebook newsfeed. The writer community I engage with reacts in the only way it knows how, groping for words to make sense of the senseless, offering heartfelt condolences, and writing memorial columns. I look up Vizzini’s name,…
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PAPER DREAMS: A Teacher’s Resource Guide
Whether the pedagogical goal is analysis, comparison, or simply exposure, literary magazines are the literature of the moment, and students benefit from such contemporary reading. – Nicholas Ripatrazone MADISON, NJ — Nicholas Ripatrazone’s essay, “Teachers: Use Literary Magazines,” argues for giving English, publishing, and creative writing students access to the current publications that inspire and…
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Chasing the Dragons
I am walking along a wooded path that hugs the edge of one of Norway’s largest fjords, a few miles outside the city of Trondheim. This close to the Arctic Circle, there are only a few hours of daylight to see where you’re stepping, so I quicken my pace, trying to get as much trail-time…
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Loving Lit Mags: Eric D. Goodman
In August 2013, Atticus Books published Paper Dreams: Writers and Editors on the American Literary Magazine, a compilation of the continued history and conversations of the people who love new and interesting literature so much they spend their lives dedicated to sharing it with the world. As an ongoing effort to spread the word, it…
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The Group Poetry Project: Branches and Twigs
For the month of June, writer and poet Mike Maggio decided to start a group writing project that would bring together twenty poets and end with twenty-one new poems. After each poet contributed one line to the collaborative poem, each had the chance to revise the poem within his or her style while maintaining the…
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Loving Lit Mags: Jodee Stanley
Tomorrow we publish Paper Dreams: Writers and Editors on the American Literary Magazine, a compilation of the continued history and conversations of the people who love new and interesting literature so much they spend their lives dedicated to sharing it with the world. But before we make history, it is only polite to introduce you…
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The Group Poetry Project: Switching Places
For the month of June, writer and poet Mike Maggio decided to start a group writing project that would bring together twenty poets and end with twenty-one new poems. After each poet contributed one line to the collaborative poem, each had the chance to revise the poem within his or her style while maintaining the…