September/October 2021

Artist Nathan Langston put a unique spin on a game of Telephone by using a fragment of poetry to inspire one artist then another—growing into a multifaceted project with contributions from artists from seventy-two countries.

The first lines of a dozen noteworthy books, including Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr and Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead.

To recruit talented BIPOC professionals into literary agenting and ensure social justice in the field, Literary Agents of Change offers a paid internship program as well as a mentorship program focusing on retention.

Roxane Gay Books, a new imprint of Grove Atlantic, will publish three books a year in a variety of genres, with the author herself casting a wide net in terms of the submissions she’s seeking and dispensing with the usual requirements.

The nonprofit press in Asheville, North Carolina, publishes eight poetry, fiction, and nonfiction books a year with a mission to bring an inclusive ethos to books illuminating “the life of the spirit.”

The author of the new poetry collection Gumbo Ya Ya discusses four journals that first published their work, including BOAAT, TriQuarterly, Southeast Review, and Ploughshares.

In a new graphic novel, comic artist Theo Ellsworth adapts Jeff VanderMeer’s tale of a mysterious building where “office culture” connotes secret languages and unspoken rituals. 

Acclaimed author and agent Catherine Cho discusses her start as an agent; her decision to open her own agency, Paper Literary; and her advice for writers daunted by the process of finding representation.

Write a poem that contemplates the impact you want to make as a writer, a story about a culture shift in a family, or an essay about a simple word and its presence in your life.

A poet discovers a newfound appreciation for the dandelion, blackberry vines, and globes of white clover that encroach on her garden, finding an inspiring metaphor for the wild things waiting to be unearthed in her own unfinished drafts.

The author examines her personal relationship to the professional work of translation, forms of responsibility unique to the genre, and the complex notion of translation as a labor of love.

The author reflects on her complicated pregnancy and subsequent abortion—experiences that shaped her first book, the memoir Poor Your Soul—and the ways writers explore the periphery of events to find the beating heart of their subjects.

After her notebooks and journals were stolen, a memoirist revisits the stories of famous writers who lost their own work and describes how losing her notes forced her to re-envision her first book, Low Country, published in April.