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A Poetry FAQ for Regular Folks
April 6th, 2020
Header image by Brad Neathery via Unsplash Poetry and country music have something in common. When you go into the record store, you can get away with, “I like everything but country. Fuck that shit.” When you go into the bookstore, you can get away with, “I like everything but poetry. Fuck that shit.”
Read Column →Celebrating the Woman Who Would Become Maya Angelou, on her Birthday
April 3rd, 2020
Image via mayaangelou.com Marguerite Johnson is not a name we all know and recognize. The woman behind the legacy of a more familiar name, she was so much more than a poet and writer. She lived a life of passion and love. She spread lessons learned through survival and kindness. She became a matriarch of inspiration and hope.
Read Column →Ask Nick: Publishing 201: Why Are Small Presses Almost Always So Awful?
April 2nd, 2020
Hello, and welcome back to Publishing 201—an occasional column in which I'll answer your questions about writing and publishing, so long as they haven't been asked and answered a million times already. There is plenty of 101-level advice out there, and thousands of writers who can repeat it, but very little has been written for writers further along in their careers or aesthetic development. If you have a 201-level question you'd like me to answer, reach out!
Read Column →5 Classic Books to Re-Visit for International Children’s Book Day
April 2nd, 2020
Remember the days that you spent as a kid holed up in your room, reading the hours away? You were probably ignorant of the outside world’s goings-on, since you were too busy traveling to colorful, impossibly creative universes beyond the limits of reality — all via great children’s books.
Read Column →Most Mischievous Pranksters in Literature
April 1st, 2020
Usually as March rolls into April, you’re a little more careful about anything you may see or hear, especially on the internet, for fear of falling prey to a practical joke. As harmless as pranks played on friends and families can be, they can prove irksome, as can the never-ending effort to one-up their perpetrators.
Read Column →"Star Trek: Picard" is Having Too Much Fun
March 31st, 2020
Jean-Luc Picard has always been my captain. He was my TV dad, teaching me more about the difference between right and wrong than eighteen years of church. When faced with a moral quandary, I ask myself “What would JL do?” I have watched just about every minute of Star Trek that exists, and loved them all in their own special ways, but it was Picard that turned me from a casual rerun viewer into the hardcore fan I am today. So Star Trek: Picard promised to be the show I’d been asking Santa Clause for every Christmas the last twenty-six years.
Read Column →5 Comfort Reads to Remind You of the World’s Resilience
March 30th, 2020
Photo by Lisa Fotios One of my favorite types of library service to offer is bibliotherapy. Yes, that’s a real thing. And it’s exactly what it sounds like—a reading list to help you process trauma, grief, and other difficult emotions when your world has turned upside down. And since our whole world is upside down right now, it seems imperative to me that the prescription would be for the big picture books, characters against the circumstances of the world, good people fighting the good fight.
Read Column →Big-Time Author Bucket List
March 27th, 2020
Millionaire authors and billionaire authors and famous authors: It’s too late for you. Everyone else: Hear me out. Now is the time to make a list of things you want to do on the off chance you become rich and famous. It’s clear that once you become rich and famous, you lose perspective. You won’t have great ideas. You just spend your time trying to maintain your riches and fame. Or making mosquito nets. Like netting has ever helped tens of thousands of people...
Read Column →Would You Please Read This? How to Get Book Blurbs
March 26th, 2020
You wrote the book and then edited the book. Then you found someone interested in publishing it and edited the whole thing again. Now you have to write copy for the back and, if you don't have a publisher that takes care of it, get some blurbs.
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