An anthology featuring the writing of the 2021 Jack Straw Writers, as selected by Curator E. J. Koh: S. Erin Batiste, C.R. Glasgow, Patrycja Humienik, Grace Jahng Lee, José Luis Montero, Greg November, Tochukwu Okafor, Michael Overa, Paulette Perhach, Abi Pollokoff, Kristie Song, and Daniel Tam-Claiborne.

Learn how to take your work to the next level with this informative guide on the craft, business, and lifestyle of writing With warmth and humor, Paulette Perhach welcomes you into the writer’s life as someone who has once been on the outside looking in. Like a freshman orientation for writers, this book includes an in-depth exploration of all the elements of being a writer—from your writing practice to your reading practice, from your writing craft to the all-important and often-overlooked business of writing. In Welcome to the Writer’s Life, you will learn how to tap into the powers of crowdsourcing and social media to grow your writing career. Perhach also unpacks the latest research on success, gamification, and lifestyle design, demonstrating how you can use these findings to further improve your writing projects. Complete with exercises, tools, checklists, infographics, and behind-the-scenes tips from working writers of all types, this book offers everything you need to jump-start a successful writing life.

The fifteenth volume in the Art of series takes an expansive view of revision—on the page and in life In The Art of Revision: The Last Word, Peter Ho Davies takes up an often discussed yet frequently misunderstood subject. He begins by addressing the invisibility of revision—even though it’s an essential part of the writing process, readers typically only see a final draft, leaving the practice shrouded in mystery. To combat this, Davies pulls examples from his novels The Welsh Girl and The Fortunes, as well as from the work of other writers, including Flannery O’Connor, Carmen Machado, and Raymond Carver, shedding light on this slippery subject. Davies also looks beyond literature to work that has been adapted or rewritten, such as books made into films, stories rewritten by another author, and the practice of retconning in comics and film. In an affecting frame story, Davies recounts the story of a violent encounter in his youth, which he then retells over the years, culminating in a final telling at the funeral of his father. In this way, the book arrives at an exhilarating mode of thinking about revision—that it is the writer who must change, as well as the writing. The result is a book that is as useful as it is moving, one that asks writers to reflect upon themselves and their writing.

In the art and social change exhibit The Incredible Intensity of Just Being Human, curator and artist Kate Vrijmoet, and artists June Sekiguchi, Holly Ballard Martz, Ezra Dickinson, Ann Teplick, John William Keedy, Valaree Cox, and Lynn Schirmer; with writers David Francis, Gayle Clemans, and Grace Boey shed light on the effect mental illness has on individuals and society.Mental illness inflicts losses on society as a whole, through cultural messages that people who struggle with mental illness are not fit to contribute to the richness and depth of the social fabric.Every year one in four people suffers with mental illness. The cost of depression-related workforce absenteeism, and of lost productivity is $200 billion per year. By talking about mental illness, we reduce the shame surrounding it, creating a space where the prejudices and fears we all have can give way to our compassion and humanity.

This volume of visionary poetry by an Oregon poet showcases his unique style of streaming periodicity combined with wide-ranging intellect.

Blues Divine is at heart an ancestral mixtape and tribute. These poems have been creative salvations, signposts, people's history and testimonies. Inside is a journey of many intersections and switchbacks, fast running rivers and swamplands, as well as those sacred places where sun splits the sky wide open. Born into a crossing over place where Indigenous met African met Texan met Alaskan Native, sat down in a pre-Stonewall gay bar and discussed shadows and recovery...left home age ten and been looking ever since...sang and sang again...rambled on...and still underway. "Everything about Storme Webber signifies something. Her writing signifies lost words re-discovered, re-birthed, and given new meaning. Her voice signifies the memories of our mothers and grandmothers - and their mothers. It signifies both the calmness and tempestuousness of primordial waters. Storme's very presence signifies the global 'we'. The 'we' of this planet whose roots run deep into the earth, who have tended the earth, ever since Sky-woman was lowered onto the turtle's back. Storme signifies this. She signifies the we-womyn-who-love-womyn-who-live-womyn-centered-lives, politically, personally, spiritually... at times vulnerably, at times fearlessly, but always honestly. Storme Webber signifies the consummate artist/priestess. When you witness her center-stage, or hear her recordings, you witness more than performance, you witness ritual. " Sha'Ifa Mami Watu, Hiphop Haijin/Lyricist-the Legacy trio

Wanting to understand how her path is tied to her mother tongue, Anne, a young, multiracial American woman, travels through China, the country of her mother’s birth. Along the way, she tries on different roles—seeker, teacher, student, girlfriend, artist, and daughter—and continually asks herself: Why do I feel called to make this journey? Whether witnessing a Tibetan sky burial, teaching English at a university in Chengdu, visiting her grandmother in LA, or falling in love with a Chinese painter, Anne is always in pursuit of intimacy with others, even as she is all too aware of her silences and separation. For two years, she settles into a comfortable routine in her boyfriend’s apartment and regains fluency in Chinese, a language she spoke as a young child but has used less and less as an adult. Eventually, however, her desire to know herself in other ways surfaces again. She misses speaking English, she feels suffocated by urban, polluted China, and she starts to fall for another man. Ultimately, Anne realizes that to live her truth as a mixed-race, bilingual woman she must embrace all of her influences and layers. In a world that often wants us to choose a side or fit an ideal, she learns that she can both belong and not belong wherever she is, and that home is ultimately found within.