Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2022 i The Writer

I was a senior in college when I realized I was an editor at heart, not a writer. Fresh off a summer internship at a daily newspaper, I entered the fall semester filled with big ideas about changing the world and smaller ideas about strengthening the copy at my college paper. That first week back, I handed (literally handed – we still used paper in the late ’90s) a story I’d edited to a younger writer, who glanced at my markup and shook his head. “You took out four of my em dashes,” he said with a wounded tone. I smiled. “I did. You have too many of them,” I said. I had edited writers three times his age all summer. I felt confident. Until… “How many is too many?”…

Refuse to Be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts BY MATT BELL Author and writing teacher Matt Bell offers a three-part plan to help aspiring novelists finish a manuscript. First is the exploratory phase of discovery and drafting; the second involves structured outlining and rewriting; then, finally, is the “refuse to be done” stage of polishing and making final revisions. “Bell’s cheerleading is bolstered by plenty of interviews and examples…and writers intimidated by the process will find solace in the case he makes that while good writing is not easy, putting one’s whole self into a novel is an ‘incredible joy,’” writes Publishers Weekly. Out March 8. The Lonely Stories: 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone EDITED BY NATALIE EVE…

THE WEBSITE FOR THE 10-YEAR-OLD journal Atticus Review has a lot going on. You can read fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction by contributors from around the world. You can subscribe to “The Weekly Atticus” for short essays and letters penned by the editors. You can read blog posts pertaining to the journal, and you can click on the “Mixed Media” link for hybrid pieces ranging from short video essays and poems to works that combine literature and visual art. On the website, editors note that they “like hybrid, unconventional work that pushes boundaries, elevates and edifies on an intellectual level, that investigates the inscrutable essence of a thing, that avoids artifice to stand firmly in its unique voice.” Spend some time looking through the archives, and you’ll see right away…

Ashley M. Jones has edited literary magazines, taught at universities, and been a Knight Foundation Fellow. But wait! There’s more: she’s also the founder of the Magic City Poetry Festival, which celebrates Birmingham, Alabama’s poetry scene, and been named Alabama’s youngest-​ever and first Black poet laureate. She is the author of the books Magic City Gospel (Hub City Press 2017), dark / / thing (Pleiades Press 2019), and REPARATIONS NOW! (Hub City Press 2021) and teaches at the Alabama School of Fine Arts and Converse University’s low-residency MFA program. She’s also a witty, sparkling conversationalist and one of the most generous women I know. We asked her for five must-read books by Black Americans. Feminism is for Everybody, bell hooks; Sister, Outsider, Audre Lorde. “I wanted to focus on books…

You may have noticed that there are no em dashes in this story. There are, instead, en dashes. The en dash is essentially the same as the em dash. They serve identical grammatical purposes. The only differences between them are length, preference, and numerical usage. Theendashisroughly as long as the letter n, while the em dash is as long as the m. Somepeopleprefertheshorter dash (including those people in charge of the andahem whileothers like the appearance of the em dash (AP Style employs it exclusively). Theendashisalso sometimes used without spaces between numbers, i.e., it has been 1–2 minutes since I learned the length of an en dash.…

F = Fiction N = Nonfiction P = Poetry C = Children’s Y = Young adult O = Other F N C Y 3 Seas Literary Agency Romance, women’s fiction, science fiction/fantasy, YA and MG fiction, and select nonfiction titles. No email queries accepted. No attachments. Contact: 3 Seas Literary Agency, P.O. Box 444, Sun Prairie, WI 53590. threeseaslit@aol.com threeseasagency.com F N The Aaron M. Priest Literary Agency Seeks mainstream and literary fiction, thrillers, and narrative nonfiction. Query by email only. No attachments. Contact: The Aaron M. Priest Literary Agency, 200 W. 41st St., 21st Floor, New York, NY 10036. See website for specific agent email addresses. aaronpriest.com C Y Andrea Brown Literary Agency Children’s literature only. Seeks picture books, easy readers, chapter books, MG, YA, juvenile nonfiction, crossover fiction,…

Upcoming calls for submissions Claymore Award: Thriller/mystery/suspense manuscripts The Claymore Award, sponsored by Killer Nashville, rewards authors of “unpublished English-language manuscripts containing elements of thriller, mystery, crime, or suspense” that are not currently under contract. These elements can also include manuscripts in the action, adventure, alternate history, horror, sci-fi, speculative, and Western genres. Submit the first 50 pages for a chance to win steeply discounted admission to the annual Killer Nashville conference and potential publication. Enter by April 1. killernashville.com/claymore Clinch: Writing about martial arts This new publication seeks previously unpublished creative writing submissions (poems, short fiction, essays, etc.) about or relating to martial arts for its inaugural issue. Submit by April 1. clinch.submittable.com/submit Orison Prize: Poetry and fiction The editorial staff at Orison Books will award $1,500 and publication…

Getting to know Black American literature Over the past five years, I’ve been making a concerted effort to read more Black literature. And I’ve noticed that the work I was encouraged to read in college, from writers like Zora Neale Hurston or Toni Morrison, or even the work that I read in my MFA program, from Zadie Smith and Edwidge Danticat, bears little resemblance to the work I’m reading today (Victor LaValle’s The Changeling or Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half, Kiese Laymon’s Heavy). To help me shed some light on the breadth of Black American literature, I turned to Monica L. Miller, a professor of English and Africana Studies at Barnard College. Miller is a scholar of African American culture, art, and literature, and her book, Slaves to Fashion: Black…

When I first began writing the “Literary Spotlight” column almost two decades ago, most literary journals were print publications showcasing traditional poetry and prose along with visual art. Flash forward to 2022, where the sky’s the limit for digital magazines accessible to readers around the world. Editors actively seek out cine poems and video prose. They publish full-cast audio versions of short stories. They devote entire webpages to a single story and a single writer so that readers can peruse the creative piece along with visual art and video and original music compositions, and then watch interviews with the writer for insights into the storytelling process. This is a thrilling time to be a writer. The word “experimental” in a journal’s submission guidelines means so much more than it once…

1 When using an em dash in place of parentheses, use two dashes to offset the clause. Example: Remember in season one of Ted Lasso – tell me you watch Ted Lasso – when Ted says the word “plan” so many times, it loses all meaning? 2 Try offsetting a phrase with commas instead. If it works, use the commas. They’re less intrusive. Example: I went through the manuscript to revise it and realized, ‘Holy crap, that em dash doesn’t belong there.’ 3 Use em dashes to avoid a series of commas. Example: Writers can use it to connect separate thoughts, set off a clause, or signal an abrupt about-face in subject – all of which enhance storytelling and vary sentence structure to achieve the comfortable cadence writers seek. 4…