As an undergraduate creative writing student, one piece of feedback kept appearing on the margin of my stories: awkward phrasing. Red markings littered my pages, arrows pointing every which way, words circled or crossed out, re-written passages squeezed between lines. As a result, I began to obsess over language.
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Throughout his political career, Joe Biden has frequently invoked his favorite poet, Seamus Heaney. Accepting the Democratic nomination for president, Biden quoted Heaney’s “The Cure at Troy,” an adaptation of Sophocles’ play Philoctetes, which posits that “once in a lifetime / the longed-for tidal wave / of justice can rise up / and hope and history rhyme.” Months later, after the brutal attack on the U.S. Capitol, Biden assumed office under the watch of fifteen thousand members of the National Guard. He did not quote Heaney, but he did suggest that his presidency might usher in one such rhyming moment, and he promised to end “our uncivil war.”
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It was difficult not being able to rely on something, really two things—writing and reading—that I have relied on my whole life as escapes and stress-reducers.
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Managing Editor of Red Hen Press Dr. Kate Gale interviews Amanda Montell, author of Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism in this in-depth interview on LitHub!
I broke every window.
The year I stole every library book.
The year I lived below the El,
always the hum, running through and by
of people who desired to be arrived.
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I’m falling apart all over the place in a hotel room in some godawful state that’s one-third of the way between Denver and Washington, D.C. I hopped in my car at 5 a.m., left my crazy-but-in-not-a-fun-way husband in bed. I got on I-70 and started heading east to where a friend lives.
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Prieto, whose micro-fiction was published in The Masters Review in 2016, debuts with this haunting novella, the winner of 2019 Red Hen Press Novella Award, in which environmental catastrophe has driven four people inside a cave.
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On the publication day of Eruptions of Inanna, learn more about the thinking and process behind author Judy Grahn‘s queer reclamation of these ancient myths, as well as Grahn’s long and storied history of gay and lesbian activism.
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Sadie Hoagland and Maria Kuznetsova first met in 2008, when they were studying fiction writing at UC Davis under Yiyun Li, Lucy Corin, Lynn Freed, and Pam Houston. Each has a second book out this spring — Kuznetsova’s second novel, Something Unbelievable, from Random House, and Hoagland’s debut novel, Strange Children, from Red Hen Press — so they took this opportunity to catch up.
A few years ago, a young woman was murdered on the campus of my hometown’s university, the same campus where I received my doctorate. It made national news, so even though I teach on a campus thousands of miles away, I heard about it.
Focus on the shapes. Cirrus, a curl,
stratus, a layer, cumulus, a heap.
Humilis, a small cloud,
cumulus humilis, a fine day to fly.
MIDCOAST — On Sunday, June 13, from 4 to 5:30 p.m., inaugural poet Richard Blanco will appear on ThePoetsCorner.org in conversation with fellow poets Tess Taylor and Rick Barot, brought to the public in collaboration with Maine Media Workshops + College. These three poets are teaching workshops and craft seminars during Maine Media’s third annual Writers Harbor Poetry Week from June 14 through 18.
This grim, weirdo allegory—a little Lord of the Flies, a little Animal Farm—sets us down on a dystopian island inhabited by pigs that eat the world’s refuse: toasters, radioactive waste, toenail clippings. Four kids also live here, moving this garbage from the coast to the pigsty. Some adults also occupy the island as a ruling class. Then people start arriving amid the trash. As you might guess, the morality of feeding them to the pigs is rather fraught.
Greenfield, MA – Set in an unspecified re-purposed building in a small Western Massachusetts town, Northampton author and playwright Ellen Meeropol’s GRIDLOCK tackles issues of climate change and radical activism as two sisters reunite after a fifty-year separation. On Friday, June 11, a public reading of this work-in-development will give audience members and artists the chance to hear and comment on this new play.
The reading will take place at 7:30 pm at the LAVA Center at 324 Main St, Greenfield. The reading is free and open to the public, but seating capacity is very limited, so reservations are advised by calling 413-768-7514 or writing to silverthornetheater@gmail.com, Attendees should have been fully vaccinated.
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