Authors Electric

Writers sometimes talk about poems as though longer automatically means deeper. We admire ambitious epics, book-length projects, and intricate sequences. There is certainly a place for all of those things. But every now and then a tiny poem arrives and quietly reminds us that a few words can carry an astonishing amount of weight. Take this poem, "Second Grade," by Merilee Johnson: That's it. Three lines. Eight words. And yet, the poem opens an entire world. I immediately find myself wondering about the child in the poem. Was she shy? Outgoing? Did she look forward to hearing her name each morning? Was the bus driver teasing, greeting, or celebrating her? Was it a song repeated every day, becoming part of the rhythm of childhood? The poem never tells us. Instead, it trusts us. One of the remarkable things about very short poems is how much they rely on the reader. Longer works often have room to explain, develop, and elaborate. A poem like this succeeds because it provides...

  Have you been to a poetry reading where some of the poets read in the same way? The stretched pauses. The careful pacing. The slightly mystical cadence. The voice that quietly announces, “This is a poem.” If you have, you'll know that the prior   sentence, in “poetry voice,” would probably sound like this: The voice  that quietly  announces,  “This is a poem.” And it would be read with rising inflection at the end of every line, like everything was a question, or a revelation, or both. A recent  New York Times  piece looks at this, often called the “poet voice,” and asks why so many poets end up reading their work in nearly identical ways.  Poetry lives in two spaces at once. On the page, it’s quiet, interior, personal. Out loud, it becomes physical and shared. Breath matters. Silence matters. Tone matters. Pace matters. The same poem can feel like a different piece of writing depending on how it’s voiced. But sometimes readings by different po...

  The New York Times today published a fascinating interview with author George Saunders .  Saunders, born December 2, 1958, is an American author known for short stories, essays, novellas, novels, and books for children. His work has appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, and GQ . From 2006 to 2008, he also wrote a weekly column titled “American Psyche” for the weekend magazine of The Guardian. Saunders is a professor at Syracuse University and has received multiple National Magazine Awards for fiction, winning in 1994, 1996, 2000, and 2004. He earned second prize in the O. Henry Awards in 1997. His debut collection, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, was a finalist for the 1996 PEN/Hemingway Award. In 2006, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and received the World Fantasy Award for his short story “CommComm.” His later collection, In Persuasion Nation , was a finalist for The Story Prize in 2007. Saunders won the PEN/Malamud Award in 2013 and w...

                                                                      I consider the ups and downs of being a freelance businesswoman and creative, and why it is sometimes a battle to be taken seriously. It’s a stormy day in what promises to be a sweltering summer, and am I relaxing with my feet up on this ‘day of rest’? Don’t be silly, I’m self-employed! Time off? You must be joking! Whilst you nine-to-fivers can make plans for the weekends and evenings, every time I do something other than my actual job, I lose money. So, I work seven days a week, every evening and a bit of Saturday and Sunday morning. Yes, I love what I do, and you know what they say – if you love what you do you never work a day in your life. Well, it sure feels like hard work sometimes, I can tell you. ...

As we enter May, the sun is shining and some of us are looking forward to our summer holidays. No doubt some of us booked it months ago, although some of us favour spontaneity and book ‘last minute.com’! As someone who works a lot of the time at hours which some would find unsavoury – evenings, weekends and stepping off stage at 10 pm, I thought about how much I enjoy work. In fact, I feel a bit lost without it. However, I still need a break. So, what do holidays mean to us, and how can we make the most of them?   Sometimes you just have to stop. In our hectic world, we must find a way to genuinely switch off the noise, as tempting as it may be to find the hotel with the fastest internet connection. For me, it’s difficult to separate home and work life because I mostly work at home. There’s always the ironing pile looming like an undiscovered mountain range, or the depths of the dishwasher to dive into; housework often squats at the back of my mind threatening to de-rail the writin...

  Tom Robbins died.  Oh, I didn't have any easy way to say it because there is no easy way to tell the world that your favorite author of all time has left you here without another book.  News Report Oh, don't even speak to me. I don't care if I am being dramatic. I cannot tell you how many rough patches in my life this odd man's odd books got me through. Nor can I adequately describe how he made me want to be a writer. I keep my laptop on a stand now, at the behest of my chiropractor, and I have Tom's photo on the stand, looking up at me from under my laptop. Telling me to be laid back, but to also write the thing. You can see me talking about his book Still Life With Woodpecker here . I've met some cool authors in my life: Ken Kesey, Kinky Friedman, Walter Mosley, Juan Felipe Herrera, but never Tom, my #1. And never my #2, which would have to be Raymond Chandler, but I think he was gone before I got here. If you haven't read Tom Robbins try what is probab...

 Just before the pandemic (the 2020s, to clarify for when I beocme nothing but a blip in history), we sought a better situation for our daughter and enrolled her in a private school. Moving from a class of 30 to one of 12 transformed her academics, though it strained our finances. Among her new classmates was an unexpected addition—a guinea pig named Miss Addie. The school asked for volunteers to care for Addie over Christmas break, and we eagerly stepped in. Addie and I bonded instantly (I’m a self-proclaimed pet whisperer), and when it came time to return her, I delayed by almost a week, because I just couldn't! I mean, look at those lovely, soulful, pink eyes! Pink! When the pandemic closed the school in March, they asked me to take her in again. By May, the school announced its closure (lack of funds... and at 1500/month, in a rural farm area, I understood why), and Addie became a permanent part of our family. During lockdown, my daughter discovered, through taking a guinea pig...

Hi lovely   AE   readers, Dianne here. I run the publishing company Current Words Publishing, which is partner publishing company. In addition to doing partner publishing my company also founded and supports Old Scratch Press (OSP), a poetry/short form collective. In 2025 OSP and its members are going to open up more opportunities for people not in the collective to have a chance to have their work in poetry or short form published. Currently there are opportunities remaining this year through Current Words Publishing’s literary magazine INSTANT NOODLES . Recently Morgan Golladay, an author I have worked with many times, has recently won a few awards for both her fiction and her poetry,  and through OSP has just published her first book, THE SONG OF NORTH MOUNTAIN which she both wrote and illustrated.  I sat down to talk with her ( https://www.facebook.com/morgangolladayfineartist )  about her book and her work.   Current Words Publishing (CWP):  Wha...

  I love listing to music when working in my kitchen. The music has to match my mood, so yesterday, I decided to pop a cd in that a friend in Ukraine gave us. They’re Russian hymns. My religious knowledge of Russian doesn’t go anywhere beyond the words for Heaven and Jesus. Not very helpful to understand songs, you might think, but I just love listening to them. I even have favourites, with one of them moving me every time I listen to it. Without knowing what it’s about... What kind of listener or reader are you? Do you need to understand it all to be moved by words? My husband does not like listening to songs in other languages. “I have no idea what it’s about, and the songs all sound the same,” he says. Maybe it’s because I used to read my brother’s books when I was little. I’m pretty sure that I didn’t understand those books, but it never spoilt my reading fun. I remember my first book in English, Anne of Green Gables. I was eleven, and I started by looking up all the unknow...