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Simultaneity

Not much fazes me in the World of Creative Writing—a terrifying realm, to be sure—and though occasionally bummed, I don’t get too shaken up by phrasing such as “Dear Writer,” “we regret to inform you,” and “over x hundred/thousand/million/billion applicants.” So it goes. There are six words, however, that cause me to recoil involuntarily when…

Cover art for Glaciers by Alexis Smith

Glaciers

GlaciersAlexis M. SmithTin House Books, January 2012112 pages$10.25 Isabel, the protagonist in Alexis M. Smith’s new novel Glaciers, was only a month old when her family departed Seattle by ferry, returning to their roots in Alaska. She can’t recall the trip, but as an adult envisions that, “Like other great creatures before them, the glaciers…

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Writing Fiction, Writing Plays, Writing Voice: an Interview with Carol Gilligan

I first met Carol Gilligan in 1994. I’d read In a Different Voice in college, and had been intrigued by that book’s observation that women’s voices change the moral conversation…so when I met Carol I was prepared to see her through the lens of that groundbreaking work and all the political conversation it had generated….

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The Great MFA Debate

If you’re interested in poetry and/or literary fiction and have been reading the Internet at any point over the last decade, you’re probably at least vaguely aware that there’s some controversy over the MFA degree: the number of people pursuing it, the effect it has on American writing, and its overall usefulness in our capitalist…

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Finding Time to Write

Very few writers can actually support themselves with their writing. Since, like the vast majority of writers out there, I work during the day, people often ask me when I have time to write. After all, with a corporate job, family life, varying attempts at a social life, fantasy sports, television, travel, drinking, trading barbs…

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ePocalypse Now

So! A quick caveat. By night, I’m a poet: I write, I submit, I sometimes get an acceptance, I get a bunch of rejections, and I submit again. Lather, rinse, repeat. There’s notoriously little money in poetry, however, so by day I work in the digital group of a publishing company. The caveat I mention…