By Allison K Williams You’ve heard it: You need a mailing list. Perhaps you’ve poked around on Substack, or are wondering what’s up with Substack, or are sick to death of hearing …

By Rebecca Morrison I left Iran in 1979, and wrote a novel, The Blue Dress, based on my childhood as an Iranian immigrant struggling with body image, and a complicated mother-daughter relationship.…

By Allison K Williams A writer friend had an essay rejected fourteen times. It dealt beautifully with the journey of her abusive father’s dementia, and recognizing that her now-caring relatio…

Lack of support might come from fears about their own privacy, not understanding the enormity of your achievement, and/or information overload.

Lack of support might come from fears about their own privacy, not understanding the enormity of your achievement, and/or information overload.

You can't write a powerful message while controlling how it will be received.

By Allison K Williams Did you miss me? For 5 months, I was off Facebook, my account disabled in a worldwide, AI-driven “crackdown” on rule-breakers, pornographers and hackers, Meta’s attempt to sho…

Classic album reviews from the 1970's and 1980's

By Allison K Williams My mother, as pageant queen Miss Do-It-Now, urging construction companies not to wait until spring. When people meet my mother, they nod and say, “That explains so much.” We a…

By Allison K Williams The Walking Library in London “Writing an essay collection or a memoir is an act of generosity. A common misconception is that these kinds of books are all about the aut…

By Allison K Williams How do you “show” when you just don’t know? First-person POV in both memoir and fiction demands emotional truth—but what happens when the main character doesn’t (or can’t) kno…

Can you write a powerful, true story in less than 300 words? Learn how to write emotionally resonant, attention-grabbing micro memoirs.

By Allison K Williams Ever been to a funeral for someone you don’t know? Maybe your spouse’s coworker’s spouse, or your mother’s friend’s cousin. You felt the warm, hu…

By Rebecca Morrison I met Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of the blockbuster Eat, Pray, Love, at a book event in DC last year. It wasn’t one of those quick “hello, sign my book” interactions. I arriv…

By Allison K Williams Recently, I heard a panel of distinguished agents and publishing-house editors discussing trends in publishing, social media, and where authors fit in the literary machine. Wh…

By Allison K Williams What makes a place, or a thing, matter? In The Late Scholar, Jill Paton Walsh’s continuation of Dorothy L. Sayers’ Golden Age detective novels, Peter Wimsey sees a…

I was a voyeur watching with fascination like a child at a holiday parade.

By Trish McDonald “Don’t you realize everything has an expiration date?” A literary agent asked me this question as I stood in front of a panel of publishing executives. It was 2020 and I had enter…

The sense of community I felt at a Capitol vigil for the Hortmans gave me insight and hope for our democracy.

How often do you read the literary journals you submit your work to? Flash has been around for centuries but as “flash” only for around 23 years, when James Thomas’s wife suggested the term. Lots of o...

Dear Writer/Artist/Creative Person of Some Type— We have been admiring your writing/painting/non-specific creative thing for a while/some time/the length of time it takes to do a Google search now …

Maris Kreizman writes about the way police are mythologized in popular culture in this excerpt from her book 'I Want to Burn This Place Down'

Our sister went to help the people who came out of the volcano. She told us she was going to leave at the 4th of July picnic, while we sat around eating corn, our hands fatty with butter, silk in our ...

By Grace Hwang Lynch My father handed me a black plastic USB drive in an old bill envelope with a glassine window. It was smaller than my finger and looked like one of the many useful things a retired...

By Allison K Williams Brevity’s Editor-in-Chief considers his options for a new literary agent “Eeeeee! Eeeeee! Eeeeee!” were my measured and intelligent words upon scheduling The Call. For t…