Writing Life
How Do You Find a Writers’ Group? Try Making Your Own
A roundtable discussion between five writers in a writers’ groups about building—and maintaining—writers’ groups.
What If I Never Publish Another Book?
Book publishing is one hell of a marathon. As soon as one race ends, another begins.
Writing Haibun and Parenting Like a Poet
My daughter is both woman and girl, loving me and needing to find space from me, and I am teacher and student, confident and terrified.
Being a Good Lawyer Can Make You a Bad Writer
But being a good writer makes me an even better lawyer.
How Pottery Taught Me to Love Writing First Drafts
I reveled in the circularity of pottery: All mass—all creative matter—was conserved.
If I Want to Be a Writer, I Can’t Teach Writing
I wanted the dullest, most mindless job possible. I wanted all the stress to vanish. Maybe, if I had the freedom to think about nothing, I could write again.
Writing an Ordinary Existence
I didn’t know how to make things happen in fiction—maybe because the drama of my life seemed so ordinary to everyone else.
I Found My Literary Community by Writing Book Reviews
My goal wasn’t to become a career critic, but to get the word out about books I felt deserved the attention.
Publishing Your Debut Book Is Like Baking Croissants—Messy, But Worth It
Outside the publishing industry, I don’t think we spend enough time discussing the labor behind writing a book.
Loss, Uncertainty, and Love Brought Me to Literary Translation
I often think about translation as a standalone language—without it, we all become our own islands, floating on a vast ocean without ever coming across each other.