Craft is what we use to make stronger poems—it’s the way we make these poems so they can enlarge and enrich our lives, open us up, and root us more deeply in our lives and in the world. If we just write in a journal or freewrite, it serves its own purpose, but I find what carries me further into the discovery is the actual making of the poem, the craft of the poem.
Archetypes have a powerful hold on our imagination; they represent characters, patterns that we hear over and over again, that we absorb on the page and on the silver screen. More than that, they’re social scripts we find ourselves unconsciously following. I’m paraphrasing Charles Baxter, but be on guard against what’s too familiar, of what emerges too easily from our imaginations.
In the introduction, I was framing the book. Why this book? Why me? Why now? What will you get from reading this book? A kind of a preview. So, in writing all of this, I used the phrase craft and conscience to address the importance of that duality. Craft includes conscience. Discussions of craft must include issues of conscience, because issues of conscience are not separate.
Seuss: I have a Master of Social Work degree, and I was a therapist. I taught as an adjunct in creative writing while I was doing that, and I was raising a son—a lot of that time as a single parent. I realized that to not go crazy, I had to think of everything as “of the piece.”
Piotr Florczyk is a poet, essayist, translator, and a guest professor at Antioch University Los Angeles. I attended a recent seminar of his, where I heard him debunk a number of myths about translating creative writing—including the very common “a writer must be fluent in the original language to translate a work.”[…]
These older Mexican ladies can feel like their childhoods were important. Their childhoods had beauty; their childhoods are worthy of literature.[…]
I was busy preparing for my June MFA residency when Kori, Lunch Ticket’s Editor-in-Chief, reached out and asked me if I wanted to interview Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich for the upcoming Lunch Ticket Issue 14. Groggy from a marathon reading session that lasted until 3 a.m. that morning, I rubbed my eyes with my fists and squinted […]
Percival Everett is one smart dude, much smarter than me. I worried that my interview questions wouldn’t measure up, that he would find my level of inquiry so ordinary that they would fall short of rousing his interest. Instead, I found an open, amiable, attentive individual, who paused to consider each of my questions before giving me thoughtful, albeit concise, responses. His love of language is obvious. The words he speaks are as exacting as the words he writes.
As my mother grew older she became more confused and unhappy and mean. When she was most difficult, I would soften my response by beginning to write her eulogy; two lines in I would start to forgive her a little and, toward the end, completely. Once, during her very last days, in a rare lucid […]
I met Margo Jefferson on a February afternoon in 2017, in New York City’s West Village. We sat in a café to discuss her latest book, Negroland, the winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. The memoir blends the author’s personal narrative with the history of America’s historical black elite. Jefferson, […]
In early July, my editor-in-chief emailed me with the good news that Maggie Nelson had agreed to be interviewed for Lunch Ticket. I accepted the task of interviewing her with some degree of trepidation, in part due to her vast accomplishments. She is the author of nine books, including the winner of the National Book […]
Daniel José Older is the type of writer many of us writers aspire to be—careful, intentional, eminently aware of the ecosystems that produce literary work in our society, and the role this work plays in the context of a predominantly white narrative. His Twitter following is large (sitting at over 22k followers), both because of […]
The story in Lidia Yuknavitch’s national bestseller, The Small Backs of Children, is centered around a picture taken by a photographer on assignment in a war zone. The picture is of a young girl caught midair at the moment an explosion kills her entire family. The novel is a combination of sexual fairy tale, anti-cautionary […]
Prolific writer of primarily creative nonfiction, Roxane Gay tackles fiction in her debut novel An Untamed State, about a Haitian-American woman, Mireille (Miri) Duval Jameson, who is kidnapped for ransom and brutalized for thirteen days as her diplomat father struggles to get her back at a fair price. The problem is, there is no getting her back—at least […]
Antonia Crane’s Spent is a memoir for readers who enjoy gritty, surreal narratives and stories that eschew easy conclusions. In Crane’s world, vicious cycles can’t be broken, self-reflection doesn’t lead to happiness, and lessons aren’t always learned. There’s a weariness to Spent that emphasizes the title, an undercurrent of longing for a job that doesn’t […]
Some authors write along the questions, Is it true, is it necessary, is it kind? Long Division is true. More than ever, it is necessary. But is it kind? Rarely are things in this complicated world that are true and necessary also kind. Long Division does not shrink away from this dichotomy—instead, it rises to meet the challenge. The bravery of writing a story without shrinking away from the violence,
It’s not often that I write a book review and start it with a food suggestion, but I’m doing it here: begin the When Women Were Warriors trilogy with a mug of the best tea you can find in your city or the thickest stew to be had, something like what Wilson’s young warrior Tamras […]
Alan Heathcock’s debut collection of short fiction, VOLT, was released in 2011 by Graywolf Press and was called one of the best books of the year by Publisher’s Weekly, the Chicago Tribune, Salon.com, and GQ, among others. It was an Editor’s Pick for both The Oxford American and The New York Times Book Review, while […]
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