Author: Tasha Golden

The Ploughshares Round-Down: Hey Poets. Get in the News.

The Ploughshares Round-Down: Hey Poets. Get in the News.

YOU GUYS. On January 29th, headlines declared that a poetry-loving schoolteacher in Russia killed his friend for asserting that prose was “the only real literature.” (Read the (short) story here.) Um. This is not how you should get in the news. But neither is this: in response to the poetry murder, the Huffington Post ran a rhymed and…

The Ploughshares Round-Down: “The Wolf of Wall Street” and Its Backlash

The Ploughshares Round-Down: “The Wolf of Wall Street” and Its Backlash

Okay writers, it’s 2014. And what better way start a new year than with an enormous media controversy surrounding a Scorcese film? I KNOW: perfect. If you’ve missed it (I’m sure you’ve had your noses to the ol’ writing grindstone), here’s the deal: The Wolf of Wall Street is a Martin Scorcese film based on a…

Where Your Writing Can Go: Storytelling as Advocacy

Where Your Writing Can Go: Storytelling as Advocacy

  Christy Burch didn’t think she was a writer. This was before she worked with rape crisis centers and with the Kentucky Domestic Violence Association (KDVA), working with advocates statewide to support victims of violence. While in these roles, she was instrumental in the release and pardon of thirteen incarcerated, battered women. She also discovered her writing side:…

Cover of Can It Be Taught

Writing in a Changing World: Craft, Readerships, and Social Media

What do you wish your MFA program had taught you? How is the literary world—and media in general—changing? How should we change with it? These are the questions that motivate Stephanie Vanderslice‘s work as a writer, professor, and HuffPost blogger. I heard Vanderslice speak at the International Great Writing Conference this June, where she tackled some controversial issues in the…

Chucking “Art for Art’s Sake” – Writers and Social Impact

Chucking “Art for Art’s Sake” – Writers and Social Impact

One morning in late September, I found myself backstage at the “Annual Day of Peace” in Covington, KY—an event that kicks off October as Domestic Violence Awareness Month. I’d been asked to perform a song I wrote about my family’s history of domestic violence, and was listening as speakers urged the young audience to find—and…

“Let’s Get You an Agent”—An Agent’s How-to for Writers

“Let’s Get You an Agent”—An Agent’s How-to for Writers

So—Eric Nelson is an agent with the Susan Rabiner Literary Agency. His own blog, “How to Think Like Your Agent,” is full of quick, no-nonsense advice. Here, he lends our readers a special dose of it: how to get an agent, from an agent’s POV. Check out his words to the wise below, then bookmark…

STEAL THIS STUFF: What Writers Can Learn from Over the Rhine

STEAL THIS STUFF: What Writers Can Learn from Over the Rhine

Okay Writers. If you’ve been tucked safely away from Great Music over the last two decades, you may be new to the “aggressively beautiful” music of Over the Rhine. Today, the husband/wife duo Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist are invading my column, not just because they’re critically acclaimed songwriters—but because, with lyrics that threaten to cross…