Poets & Writers

KEVIN LARIMER SERENA ALAGAPPAN EMMA KOMLOS-HROBSKY MARVA SHI INDIA LENA GONZÁLEZ LUCIANO GRIGERA NAÓN MURRAY GREENFIELD ANTOINE DOZOIS KAYVAN TAHMASEBIAN DESTINY O. BIRDSONG MICHAEL BOURNE JEREMIAH CHAMBERLIN JOFIE FERRARI-ADLER RIGOBERTO GONZÁLEZ DE

TWENTY YEARS AGO I PUT TOGETHER THE INAUGURAL debut poets feature, highlighting the early work of Victoria Chang, Tyehimba Jess, and Matthew Shenoda, as well as others who may be less familiar but are no less notable for the verse they put out into t

“And then I went to seek The Great Unity.” The Ocean in the Next Room (Milkweed Editions, January 2025) by Sarah V. Schweig. Second book, poetry collection. Agent: None. Editor: Daniel Slager. Publicist: Morgan LaRocca. “Two men in white robes stand

Many writers have wondered, when embarking on a new project, what might happen should Fate intervene and prevent them from finishing. This isn’t the most pleasant thought, however, and for this reason some of us have yet to make provisions for what s

Committed to the pursuit of “bold and innovative craft and sentences,” Driftwood Press (driftwoodpress.com) was established in 2020 by James McNulty and Jerrod Schwarz as an extension of the quarterly magazine they’d founded in 2013 in Tampa, Florida

Writing funny stories lies at the center of Tiffany Midge’s artistic practice. “Humor writing is a kind of self-imposed apprenticeship I’ve designed for myself: How can I incorporate humor into poetry? Fiction? An essay?” she says. “And then there is

In his poem “Winter Walk,” nineteenth-century English poet John Clare meditates on both the wonders and the woes of observing nature during a brisk wintertime walk. He writes, “A single feather of the driving storm;/And in the bitterest day that ever

Kofi Appenteng Ellen Archer Victoria Asimos Helen Atsma Donna Baier Stein Barbora Bednarikova Amy Berkower Sallie Bingham Susan M. Bockus Joseph W. Burrell Linda Casebeer Simon & Eve Colin Foundation Arlene Figman Cronk and Randy Cronk Ellen De Snait

WHO was the first person to cry out in relief at the sight of a lighthouse? Disoriented and afraid, their wooden boat thrashed by black waves, what was it like for them to suddenly see a point of light in the distance? When I’m thinking about the ver

ONE of the great delights of the camera obscura, which means “dark chamber” in Latin, is its physical simplicity relative to the complexity of the image it renders. Taken to the extreme, a properly punctured shoe-box might hold the clear but inverted

BEING a novelist means that you believe in magic. If that sounds too grandiose, feel free to puke on the floor. If you’re still with me, let me tell you about some cosmic wonder that might make you a magic believer too. I’ve been writing a trilogy of

OUT there in the pure deep dark of the ocean is a small scrap of light dancing: Look how it twists and turns, drawing disappearing shapes against the water, raising the question of what it could be trying to say. You might wish to examine this wisp o

I HAVE never stood at the mouth of a volcano or watched one erupt in real time, thank God, but whenever I come across footage of one at its best, which is to also say at its absolute worst and most destructive, I am in awe. At well over a thousand de

SUBMIT yourself to the uncertainty and mystery of it all,” advises Darius Atefat-Peckham, one of the ten authors spotlighted in our twentieth annual debut poets feature. Of course, verse has always been known to have an enchanting quality, a certain,

Changes Press (Changes Book Prize) How it began: I wasn’t able to build poems in my own voice after my mother’s death in 2013, so I stopped. I mean my poetry voice stopped. It could only ask me: What is poetry next to death? Still, during the pandemi

Alice James Books (Alice James Award Editor’s Choice) How it began: I was on the prelaw track in college and considered adding literature as a double major. When I took a course in ancient political thought, I was surprised to find the books of Genes

University of Arizona Press How it began: I have always written about language, family, inheritance, and heritage as it pertains to my own experiences as a Paraguayan American. But the birth of my child fundamentally changed my relationship to all th

Coffee House Press How it began: Originally I wanted to write poems that described the ways I saw U.S. militarization impacting desert landscapes in Arizona, as well as where and how representations of Black people and our histories took shape in the

BOA Editions (A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize) How it began: I had an intense desire to create order out of the internal chaos I felt as a young person, which I think is the reason so many young poets begin writing. I wanted poetry to serve as an anchor f

Four Way Books How it began: In 2019 I finally abandoned a manuscript I’d been working on for years because it just wasn’t coming together in the way I wanted it to. I spent a week at the Frost Place working with Tyree Daye, and I wrote every day. Th

University of Iowa Press (Iowa Poetry Prize) How it began: I started seriously writing poetry after undergraduate, and I specifically went to graduate school so I could focus more on reading and writing toward a book. My first draft of The Lengest Ne

Autumn House Press (Autumn House Poetry Prize) How it began: The poems in Book of Kin are both love poem and elegy, always beginning, like a ghazal, with an implicit address: to my beloveds, the universe, the self. Always in search of deeper connecti

Milkweed Editions (Jake Adam York Prize) How it began: I wanted to write a book that examined, complicated, and dignified parts of the communities to which I belong. I am from Oakland and Sierra Leone, two places that are susceptible to stigma and wh

FOR the past two decades Poets & Writers Magazine has celebrated noteworthy and spectacular emerging poets in an annual feature. This special coverage, which first appeared in our November/December 2005 issue, originated from the understanding that f

A prize of $10,000 is given biennially for the translation into English of a work of modern, standard (non-dialect) Italian poetry. Books by living translators are eligible. Anna Kraczyna, Jennifer Scappettone, and Charif Shanahan will judge. Using o

NORTH CAROLINA WRITERS’ NETWORK Rose Post Creative Nonfiction Competition VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY Levis Reading Prize WOMR/WFMR COMMUNITY RADIO Joe Gouveia Outermost Poetry Contest 15 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS Translation Projects Fell

Octavio Quintanilla and Natalia Treviño, both of San Antonio, Texas, won the 2024 Ambroggio Prize for Quintanilla and Treviño’s translation of Quintanilla’s Las Horas Imposibles/The Impossible Hours. They received $1,000, and Quintanilla and Treviño’

A.I.R. Studio Paducah offers residencies of two weeks to three months year-round to poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers in the Lower Town Arts District of Paducah, Kentucky. Residents are provided with a private apartment and stud

Things are changing at Poets & Writers. If you are a subscriber to this magazine or a frequent visitor to our website, perhaps you’ve already noticed that some things are different. As we ring in the New Year, I’m excited to tell you about the new in

IN 2022 my debut novel, Border Less, was published in North America (7.13 Books) and South Asia (HarperCollins India), two spaces of diasporic life and aesthetic legacies that my fiction centers. When the novel was first released in the United States