I cannot believe it is already March! February positively flew by and I don’t mean because it’s shorter than your average month. Anyway, we’ve reached the first Sunday in March, which means I’m supposed to tell you what all I read in February. I even finished a few books that had been lingering on my… Read more »
Joy Harjo – US Poet Laureate – Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Harjo is a member of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation. She is the author of several books of poetry, including An American Sunrise (W. W. Norton, 2019), and Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (W. W. Norton, 2015). I will talk a bit about Joy in this article… Read more »
New year, new column! I am so excited to start writing this new column I am calling the Book Nook. As much as I love writing, I’m always reading books. So I was able to convince the Powers that Be to allow me to write a column about books I’ve been reading. At DIY MFA,… Read more »
I’m writing this as 2020 draws to a close – and you’ll be reading it with 2020 firmly in the rearview mirror. The challenges brought to all of us by MMXX have been unprecedented. For authors, the traditional ways we’ve engaged with readers – book fairs, bookstore signings, book club gatherings, Renaissance festivals, historical re-enactments,… Read more »
Falling In Love I fell in love for the first time in July – there were fireworks (literal and figurative) and I wanted nothing more in my whole thirteen years of living than to kiss that boy. Growing up in a small Atlantic Canadian province I hold snapshots of summer in my memory – the… Read more »
Call them what you will. Nonwriters, Muggles, Philistines. Just kidding. We know them. We love them. They’re our parents, our friends, our partners and significant others. They’re the people in our lives with whom we share everything. But sometimes we aren’t always sure how to share this one thing with nonwriters. You know, one of… Read more »
Have you ever read a scene and felt like it didn’t go anywhere, or didn’t have a purpose? Do you struggle to write scenes that develop characters? On a scene-by-scene basis, do your characters experience external and internal changes? Do you do in depth scene analysis? Whether or not published in a book or jotted… Read more »
In my last article Poetry Can Change the World, I make an argument about how vital poetry still is, even in our mad-pace world. Or, lately, just our ‘mad’ world, am I right? In this article I am going to compare poetry to espresso. Hear me out. Maybe it’s my lingering ADHD, maybe it’s my… Read more »
In an effort to get our fellow word nerds to know Team DIY MFA a bit better, we decided to commandeer one of the #5onFri slots and talk about our favorite books. Predictably, each member approached the notion of “favorite” in a different way and each of us chose a different favorite. We’re a team… Read more »
As the world enters into a winter of COVID, grief hangs over so many people, it’s hard to know how to comfort others, to console oneself, to anticipate the next loss coming round the bend. It seems ridiculous to say with any kind of certainty what’s best to do in these shifting, traumatic and disruptive… Read more »
