For most people, writer’s block can be a huge issue. Whether you’re staring at a blinking cursor while finishing a term paper, poem, or perhaps the next great American novel, I feel your pain. Unlike freaks of writing nature, like Woody Allen, who claims to never get writer’s block, I experience it all the time. Getting started is always the hardest part for me. Often, I’m not sure what I want to say, or if I even have anything to say at all.
Read More“I am very rarely sexy or funny in my writing,” Matt Bell says, but his students seem to disagree. His student Maria Alverez introduced him by saying she had never laughed so hard while trying to interpret Gertrude Stein or discussing the complexities of The Sound and the Fury. Even though this is Matt’s first semester teaching here at Arizona State, it was apparent that he is already well loved by his colleagues and students. As Maria said, “In Matt’s class, we do not only read, we experience literature.”
Read MoreFour Chambers Press is an independent literary magazine based in Phoenix, Arizona that has the goal of bringing literary arts to the public. Four Chambers prints two issues a year, welcoming all genres. They often motivate first-time writers to publish their work.
On September 13th, 2014 this group brought literature to the public by holding a Flash-Mob style reading called “Flash Your Fiction” on the Phoenix light rail system. In doing so, they hoped to honor the daily occurrence of public transportation and strove to represent the unpredictability of life, which can be turned into material for poems or prose. The Flash-Mob participants divided in three groups to board the light rail from Central Ave. and Camelback Station. They staggered their reading times and performed for about twelve minutes per group, to finish at the Public Farmers Market in Roosevelt Station.
Read MoreSomewhere in Norway, trees are being uprooted and cleared out, only to make room for one thousand new trees. In one hundred years, those trees will be the source of paper for one hundred new books.
Katie Paterson has launched this art project, Future Library, with its mission being “to conceive and produce a work in the hopes of finding a receptive reader in an unknown future." Overall, the details of the project remain somewhat vague, although this seems intentional. One author per year, for the next one hundred years, will contribute to the project. And while the authors and their works' titles will be on display at the Oslo Public Library in Norway, all manuscripts will be locked away in a secret room (or something like that), until the year 2114. The Future Library will include works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, with no length minimums or maximums.
Read MoreEnjoy our prose-poem of the month, a lovely piece by Jenna Le.
HFR: "Book Report" clearly takes an interesting form -- in a way, mimicking the form of a book report or journal entries; and in the broader sense, a prose poem form. What was your thought process in creating this unique form? Did the title come before or after the final result?
JL: I was inspired to write “Book Report" after reading Ocean Vuong’s poem “Aubade With Burning City” in the February 2014 issue of Poetry. Because Vuong’s poem is written in long lines, I initially envisioned “Book Report” as a poem with long lines, even though I usually write poems with short lines.
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Happy August! Enjoy this poem from our author of the month, the talented David Ebenbach.
HFR: What responsibility do you feel in presenting these flawed but very empathetic characters in the form of a poem?
DE: I'm glad you asked about responsibility. I think we writers could talk more about the issue of responsibility in our work---responsibility to our readers, to our loved ones, to our characters. In all those cases I think we need to approach the people with empathy and a readiness for compassion, an expectation that people become more complicated the more we know them, and an awareness that our writing can affect people for better or for worse.
We received over 200 submissions to the 500 for 500: Flash-Prose Contest this spring. We were overwhelmed by the level of quality and creativity in these small stories, prose-poems, and "others." Thank you so much to everyone who shared their work.
Unfortunately, we could only choose three.
Our judge Catherine Zobal Dent commented on the abundance of talent in the submissions. In the end, she chose these three winners... >drumroll<
HFR is pleased to introduce Mark Dostert and his essay, "The Saint of 3F." This is the first installment of The Dock. Look for new online content next month.
HFR: Who has had the greatest influence on your writing?
MD: I was finishing the first draft of Up in Here: Jailing Kids on Chicago’s Other Side about the time that Anthony Swofford published Jarhead, his marine sniper’s account of the Persian Gulf War. In revising my manuscript and starting various adapted personal essays like “The Saint of 3F,” an interview comment of Swofford’s proved instructive.
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