"I never thought of myself as an outsider...[Y]ou would have to give advantage to this space where you’re not, to think of it as sovereign because you’re not there."
I was immediately captivated. Obsessed. It was the first time I'd seen a layered exploration of an American woman's psychological response to the war on terror.
We are terrified of racial guilt. But when we’re too afraid to actually deal with what’s happening in the world, to acknowledge our responsibility or what’s at stake, we will be doomed to miss the point over and over again.
Writer and journalist Ben Yagoda addresses today's recurring writing problems, how to be a sympathetic editor, and why it's nice to play for Team Yagoda.
Sometimes I get this ragged wind in my chest. It’s a graveyard in there, too: instead of clothes holding my ghost shape, it’s my old self that calls out from beneath bone.
Peter Rock discusses his fascination with the Church Universal and Triumphant, the evolution of his latest book, The Shelter Cycle, and writing well by getting deeply confused.
The following piece was presented as “5 Poems and 3 Notes” in the panel “Post Black? Culture, Craft, and Race in Verse” at the 2013 AWP Conference in Boston, Massachusetts.