On Writing

Is Everything Really Copy? Let’s Talk About Memoir and Reality TV

Nora Ephron said, “Everything is copy.” But in a memoir, much like in reality TV, art cannot represent life exactly. People are characters, snapshots of their “real” selves.

Oct 25, 2022
Making Peace With My Writing Career One Walk at a Time

With every step, I realized I didn’t have to be juggling All The Things to be a worthwhile member of society. I just needed to exist.

Dec 21, 2021
Pivoting to Screenwriting in My Forties Because I’ve Never Been More Confident

Even on my worst day as a writer, I’m closer to the creative life I dreamed of at eighteen than ever before.

Oct 07, 2021
How Writing My Young Adult Novel Helped Me Reclaim the Queer Girlhood I Lost

The years I suppressed my queerness are a loss that I'm exploring and grieving—if only through fiction.

Jun 17, 2021
Promoting My Book with Postpartum Depression

I previously had no concept of what it was like to be a victim of your troubled mind.

Jun 16, 2021
Keep Writing, Just Keep Writing

As a way to cope with rejection, I often repeated to myself: Focus on the work rather than the results.

Apr 06, 2021
Writing Myself Back Into My Body and Into the World

We have the right to imagine what is possible beyond the systems that try to destroy us. Black and queer writers have long imagined worlds beyond this one.

Mar 22, 2021
Does Your Revision Process Need More Taylor Swift?

For all her various contrived public personas and her possibly manufactured cult following, Taylor Swift is a modern day poet.

Mar 10, 2021
Let It Be Strange: A Conversation with Naima Coster, Author of ‘What’s Mine and Yours’

“The book is not straightforward, but it is expansive, and I don’t think the only way to make a story cohere is chronology.”

Mar 02, 2021
What Nourishes Your Writing Ecosystem?

On the value of understanding the kind of ecosystem that will support and sustain the flourishing of our lives, on and off the page.

Mar 01, 2021
Jaya Saxena on Giving Ourselves Permission

“If you pick up a crystal and suddenly your writer’s block is gone, it’s not the crystal—it’s you using an object to allow yourself to think differently.”

Feb 26, 2021
A Conversation with Kathleen Dean Moore, Author of ‘Earth’s Wild Music’

“Linking climate action and environmental protection to social justice action is essential. It is still possible to hope.”

Feb 16, 2021
Nadia Owusu on Writing and the Work of Staying Hopeful

“I was grateful for the beauty and for the reminders that there are seasons; that things change gradually and also suddenly.”

Feb 03, 2021
Six Authors Demystify Publishing with a Small Indie Press

Nina Boutsikaris, Jessica Gross, Sarah Minor, Chaya Bhuvaneswar, Tyrese Coleman, and Noam Dorr chat about what they’ve learned—and wish they’d known—about publishing with a small indie press.

A Conversation with Randa Jarrar, Author of ‘Love Is An Ex-Country’

“There were awkward motel and Airbnb moments involving my dog and other people’s pets. But I’m glad I have a record of those, even if I wasn't able to elevate them into art.”

Feb 01, 2021
Alice Wong on Activism, Community, and Writing

“I feel such rage—and it clarified what is important to me and what I want to write about.”

Jan 27, 2021
On Worldbuilding and the Question of Resistance

In fiction, you can feel good about resistance without actually resisting anything.

Jan 19, 2021
When There Is No Right Way to Heal

The details of those poems may be his first inkling that I know what he did.

Nov 12, 2020
Finding an “I” in Indian Literature

It turns out all I want to find in literature, whether I write or read it, is a little piece of myself.

Sep 17, 2020
Writing Sex with Women, by Women, for Women

People have sex. Women have sex. It would feel irresponsible to censor or smooth over this part of their (and our) lives.

Sep 14, 2020