The first thing you learn when writing for children and teens is that you have to get rid of the parents. With parents or other adults around, the kids don’t have as many opportunities to go on adventures or get into trouble. The easiest way to solve this problem is to kill off (or otherwise… Read more »
I struggled to come up with a perfect suggested reading list for this month’s Master Class on Short Fiction, but I kept finding myself hitting the wall. Some of you may have heard me lament the absence in the world of a perfect short story anthology . I’ve found ones that are OK but never… Read more »
I have long been on a quest for the perfect short story anthology, some book I can point my students to and say: “this is the only short story book you’ll ever need.” I’ve even tossed around the idea of someday putting an anthology together myself (a project which comes with its own host of… Read more »
Emma Komlos-Hrobsky was one of my very first friends at the MFA program I attended. We served on the staff of the Writing Program literary magazine (LIT) together and I could tell right away from her comments while evaluating submissions that Emma had an eye for awesome fiction. We both graduated in 2010 and Emma… Read more »
What makes something a verse novel? Simply speaking, a verse novel (or novel in verse) is exactly what the name implies: a novel that is told in verse rather than prose. It’s a bit more complicated than that, though. Why aren’t works like Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid called epic poems and not… Read more »
Today I’d like to welcome Caroline Starr Rose back to DIY MFA. Caroline and I met through the blogsphere in 2010, when she hosted a Verse Novel Challenge on her blog. Being a fan of verse novels, I joined the challenge and have had the pleasure of following her writing and publishing journey ever since. … Read more »
I’m guessing that after a week of reading about how great poetry is, you might be ready to dive in and read or write some poems of your own. But where to start? With all the literary resources out there, where do you go to find resources on poetry? Never fear! I’ve put together a… Read more »
It can be a challenge to wrap our minds around poetry. It’s not as straight-forward as non-fiction or fiction so many people choose to bury our heads in the sand, hoping that if we can’t see poetry then poetry can’t see us. Why not learn directly from those who have tamed the beast? That’s where… Read more »
Some time ago, I came to a realization that made me go from having a visceral hatred of poetry to suddenly rediscovering its beauty. The realization was this: It’s not that I dislike all poetry, I just dislike bad poetry. Let me backtrack a little bit. It’s 1993 and I’m in ninth grade biology class… Read more »
Today, to kick off the Master Class blog series on Poetry and Verse Novels, we have an fabulous guest post by Leslie Bulion. I first discovered Leslie’s work at BEA (BookExpo America) last year, where I came across a copy of her book At the Sea Floor Cafe. From the minute I picked up the… Read more »
