Poets & Writers

For more than 20 years, Poets & Writers Magazine has been a trusted companion to writers who take their vocation seriously.

Poets & Writers1 min read
Pw.org
Research more than 180 agents with our carefully curated Literary Agents database, which contains contact information, submission guidelines, client lists, tips, and more. Read every installment of our long-running series Agent Advice, which includes
Poets & Writers1 min read
Poets & Writers Magazine
Editor in Chief KEVIN LARIMER Senior Editor EMMA KOMLOS-HROBSKY Production Editor MARVA SHI Associate Editor JEN DEGREGORIO Associate Editor INDIA LENA GONZÁLEZ Art Director MURRAY GREENFIELD Copy Editor ANTOINE DOZOIS Proofreader KAYVAN TAHMASEBIAN
Poets & Writers2 min read
EDITOR’S Note
IN THE SPRING I HAD THE PLEASURE OF RECONNECTING W ITH someone I last saw in 2016, when I spent a week in Reykjavík to attend the Iceland Writers Retreat and give a talk at the University of Iceland. That trip came at the invitation of Eliza Reid, co
Poets & Writers3 min read
Reactions
Feedback from readers It was disappointing to read Bonnie Chau’s dismissal of the social and economic threat of AI-generated imagery and text as “overblown” in “ChatGPT Revises Authorship” (May/June 2023). The data models, which are the backbone of t
Poets & Writers4 min read
World-Building in Arizona
Like the creation narrative in the Bible’s book of Genesis, the Worldbuilding Initiative at Arizona State University (ASU) began with “the Word.” But rather than with one Word from an omnipotent creator, the initiative launched in February with new t
Poets & Writers3 min read
Page One
“I’ve never eaten a person but today I might” Open Throat (MCD, June 2023) by Henry Hoke. Fifth book, second novel. Agent: Jim Rutman. Editor: Jackson Howard. Publicist: Claire Tobin. “If you drive east from Raymond, Washington, up Highway 101 and ta
Poets & Writers5 min read
Scams Bait Self-Published Authors
On March 20, Bruce Nichols, senior vice president and publisher of Little, Brown, received a disturbing call from a self-published children’s book author. The writer said she’d been contacted by someone named William Choby, who claimed to be an edito
Poets & Writers1 min read
In Memoriam
Niels Aaboe Martin Amis Heather B. Armstrong Clayton Carlson Joan Clark Michael Denneny David Elliott Royston Ellis Rafael Guillén Haidar Haidar Mary Jo Iuppa Ken Keegan María Kodama Robert Patrick Julie Anne Peters Rachel Pollack Abel Ernesto Parent
Poets & Writers4 min read
Big Change to Canadian Poetry Prize
For more than two decades, Canada’s Griffin Poetry Prize divided submissions into two pools: one for books written or translated into English by Canadian poets and another for such books by poets from around the world. A prize, last year valued at $6
Poets & Writers2 min readGender Studies
Small Press Points
“Whose voices aren’t being heard right now, and why?” This question drove Florence Howe’s decision to establish the Feminist Press (feministpress.org) in Baltimore in 1970—and it continues to motivate the press today, says editorial director Lauren R
Poets & Writers1 min read
Contributors
ADRIENNE RAPHEL is the author of Thinking Inside the Box: Adventures With Crosswords and the Puzzling People Who Can’t Live Without Them (Penguin Press, 2020) and the poetry collections What Was It For (Rescue Press, 2017) and Our Dark Academia (Resc
Poets & Writers3 min read
Literary MagNet
When Greg Marshall began writing the essays that would become his memoir, Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew From It (Abrams Press, June 2023), he wanted to explore growing up in Utah and what he calls “the oddball occurrences in my oddbal
Poets & Writers3 min read
Meg Reid Leads Hub City
In March, Hub City Writers Project (HCWP) of Spartanburg, South Carolina, one of the South’s leading literary nonprofits, named Meg Reid its new executive director and publisher, succeeding Anne Waters. Reid has spent the past ten years with HCWP and
Poets & Writers3 min read
TheTimeIsNow
Suggested Reading: The Art of Revising Poetry: 21 U.S. Poets on Their Drafts, Craft, and Process (Bloomsbury, June 2023) edited by Charles Finn and Kim Stafford “There has long been a gap in the writing trade,” the editors write in the introduction t
Poets & Writers7 min read
The Productivity Equation
TO BE a writer is to spend time writing—along with reading, observing, and finding novel ways to color-catalogue one’s books—but traditional rules about what’s required of writers often assume able-bodied, neurotypical individuals without caretaking
Poets & Writers6 min read
Ada Zhang
AS I read each story in Ada Zhang’s brilliant collection, The Sorrows of Others, within the first few paragraphs—sometimes the first few sentences—I felt I understood the characters intimately and profoundly, such that every choice they made, no matt
Poets & Writers4 min read
Tyriek White
TYRIEK White’s debut novel, We Are a Haunting, strikes me as both a love letter to New York City and a kind of elegy. The novel alternates between the stories of Key, a doula who can see and communicate with the dead, and her son, Colly, who lives al
Poets & Writers1 min read
First Fıction 2023
by Tyriek White introduced by Maisy Card page 36 by Ada Zhang introduced by Kim Fu page 37 by Mihret Sibhat introduced by V. V. Ganeshananthan page 39 by Shastri Akella introduced by Naheed Phiroze Patel page 41 by Rebekah Bergman introd
Poets & Writers12 min read
Radical attention
KATE Zambreno admits that being photographed for a magazine doesn’t come naturally to her. “I don’t even take selfies,” she tells me. “If you look at my phone, it’s all photos of my kids.” We’re sitting on the patio of a café in Brooklyn, New York, a
Poets & Writers2 min read
Lightboxes
We rent the first floor of an old house that was long ago painted a dark slate blue with now-weathered, once-white detailing and a brick-red front door. We have been here for nearly a decade. Now there are four of us here, plus the dog. We live mostl
Poets & Writers5 min read
Mihret Sibhat
MIHRET Sibhat’s debut novel begins with God dumping rain on a small Ethiopian town as though He were mad at somebody. The resulting flood carries detritus to the Small River, which passes things along to the Medium River, which hands the lot off to t
Poets & Writers4 min read
Shastri Akella
SHASTRI Akella’s poised, elegant debut, The Sea Elephants, is a bildungsroman of a young man who joins a street theater group in India after fleeing his father’s violent disapproval, the death of his twin sisters, and his mother’s unfathomable grief.
Poets & Writers4 min read
Rebekah Bergman
EADING The Museum of Human History felt like listening to a great harmonic hum. After I finished it I found the hum lingering in my ears. Its echo continued for days. Bergman’s novel is made up of individual stories, told delicately and vividly, that
Poets & Writers6 min read
The Art Of The Comp Title
WRITING is an art; publishing is a business. Every author who hopes to be published through traditional means needs to ensure their manuscript both stands out and fits into a seriously crowded marketplace, and smartly chosen comp titles are one way t
Poets & Writers7 min read
Pitch Like A Pro
YOU probably think that writing a book means, well, writing a book. But it also means writing and editing lots of other accompanying texts describing your book that will be used throughout the publishing process. In addition to your manuscript, if yo
Poets & Writers5 min readPopular Culture & Media Studies
Thank You For Being A Friend
WHEN I’m invited as a guest agent to do Q&A sessions at panels or conferences, a question I get often from writers is an anxious “Do I need a social media presence?” When I invariably say that it’s good for us to be able to find you online—either so
Poets & Writers7 min read
What Editors Want You To Know About Agents
IT’S a common fantasy for writers, up there with the star-studded movie adaptation and surprise Nobel: the dream agent who thrills at your brilliant query, clears their schedule to chat, and, enchanted, signs you on the spot. Then you become best fri
Poets & Writers13 min read
An Author’s View of the Editorial Process
ONE of my most vivid writing workshop memories is of novelist Paul West saying to a roomful of undergrads that immediately after typing “The End” on a manuscript and mailing it off to his editor, he began to write a new book. In graduate school no on
Poets & Writers1 min read
Everything You Need To Know, From The Experts You Trust.
AVAILABLE NOW PoetsAndWritersBook.com @AvidReaderPress AvidReaderPress.com AVID READER PRESS ■
Poets & Writers18 min read
Deadlines
POETS & WRITERS MAGAZINE ANNOUNCES state, national, and international prizes in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, and translation. We list only prizes of $1,000 or more, prizes of $500 or more that charge no entry fee, and prestigious nonmone
Poets & Writers1 min read
Submission Calendar
LEDBURY POETRY Ledbury Poetry Competition COMSTOCK REVIEW Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award GHOST STORY Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition RATTLE Poetry Prize THE STORY PRIZE NARRATIVE Poetry Contest SIXFOLD Poetry and Short Story Awards CONNECTIC
Poets & Writers24 min read
Recent Winners
Christopher Chilton of New York City won the 2023 “Stories Out of School” Flash Fiction Contest for “Tree Club.” He received $1,000 and publication in A Public Space. Daniel Handler judged. The annual award is given for a work of flash fiction about
Poets & Writers12 min read
Conferences & Residencies
The 2023 Cape Cod Writers Center Conference will be held from August 3 to August 6 at the Resort and Conference Center at Hyannis in Barn-stable, Massachusetts. The conference features workshops in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, an agent p
Poets & Writers2 min read
Gala Celebrates Writers’ Superpowers
“Although this has turned out to be my dream job, eight-year-old me might have said I wanted to be an explorer, or maybe a doctor. I mean, doctors save peoples’ lives—what job contributes more to the world? But now I know that authors save lives too,

Poets & Writers

More Issues From Poets & Writers