Poets & Writers Magazine

When querying agents, do your research on the front end and send your queries in batches so they are as personalized and strategic as possible. If one of these agents lets you know they love your book and have some thoughts, do a little jig and set up a Zoom meeting, phone call, or coffee date, all of which remain the province of humans for now. Do you like their voice? Do you like their laugh?

“I often use the metaphor of Perseus and the head of Medusa when I speak of science fiction. Instead of looking into the face of truth, you look over your shoulder into the bronze surface of a reflecting shield.

This week’s installment of Ten Questions features T. Geronimo Johnson, whose novel The Occidental Book of the Dead is out today from William Morrow. In 1992, a young cop named George Washington Jonson finds himself monitoring the rough Atlanta streets he lived on as a kid with a partner who is, in many ways, his opposite: a thickly accented man named Tucker with an affinity for the Confederacy.

PEN America and P&T Knitwear are thrilled to welcome Intan Paramaditha and Mathilda Zeller for a conversation about their new releases. As summer gives way to autumn, PEN America and P&T Knitwear are thrilled to welcome Intan Paramaditha and Mathilda Zeller for a conversation about their new releases, two haunting and unforgettable books that explore folklore, mysticism, horror, grief, and the complicated bonds of sisterhood.

In our Craft Capsules series, authors reveal the personal and particular ways they approach the art of writing. This is no. 284. We often assume the speaker in a poem is the poet and that what is revealed in the poem is autobiographical. But is it always? Does it matter? Let’s go back to Dickinson’s “Tell all the truth but tell it slant—” poem and the line, “Success in Circuit lies” to understand how to write a poem slant.

I view writing a poem as an act of resistance to some part of the self that has been kept secret or silent. The idea of a daily discipline only delays me. Without urgency or vulnerability, my writing begins to sound like self-imitation. Now I view silence as a volcanic pressure that eventually erupts. I feed my silent self by paying reverent attention to the silent world around me. In Martin Buber’s book I and Thou (T. & T.

This week’s installment of Ten Questions features Tomas Moniz, whose novel, The King of Aloe Vera, is out today from Algonquin Books. Seventy-five-year-old Reyes Calderón, or Rey, has started each morning the same way for years, stepping outside to grab the San Francisco Chronicle from the front steps of his apartment building in the Mission. But his neighborhood is changing and his days of routine are coming to an end.

In our Craft Capsules series, authors reveal the personal and particular ways they approach the art of writing. This is no. 283. “Tell all the truth but tell it slant —” (1263) By Emily Dickinson Tell all the truth but tell it slant — Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth’s superb surprise As Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind — “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant.” What does this mean?

What books do you turn to when you need a bit of consolation? Comfort reads are books that readers return to again and again; knowledge of the trajectory of the story providing a bit of a warm and fuzzy feeling and relief from stress or melancholy. Whether you’re feeling downtrodden because of a dreary time of year, a recent crisis, an illness, or general distress, a comfort read—even if just reading a few pages or excerpts—is liable to restore cheer from its well-worn familiarity.

I have given similar advice to the last few novelists with whom I’ve worked: Invest emotionally in the secondary characters. They don’t have to spend as much time on the stage as your main players but they have to be compelling; their relationships to the primary characters have to be complex and intriguing enough for the reader to care about them. This was true for the work I did on The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan.