The Loft Blog

"Portrait of a Good Father" by Kristiana Kahakauwila (found in the collection This Is Paradise) is a short story that takes place over many years, following different family members as they cope, or fail to cope, with a traumatic loss. It's devastating.

I wrote the first draft of my novel—sketch really—by hand. I was alone in a hotel room, cooking on a hot plate and taking breaks in a courtyard that smelled of cat pee. It was pure magic. I’d just left my career in politics at the Minnesota State Capitol to pursue my writing.

Not that long ago, being able to write full-time for a living was the dream I was working toward. Another major professional goal was becoming a published author. Both of these have now become a reality. To be sure, neither was easy. But I received a lot of useful advice and encouragement.

Here in Minnesota, our winters are long. We spend at least four months of the year in the bitter cold, ice, and snow. It can be hard to find the energy or inspiration to be creative. Luckily, the Loft isn’t hosting winter youth . . . we’re hosting summer youth.

When you’ve experienced financial hardship, especially when it comes to putting your writing out into the world, it can be difficult to get back in the saddle again and attempt to publish your next book.

Maybe you’re already planning on attending the Loft’s Summer Youth at Mac (yay!) or maybe you need a little something to get you interested. At Summer Youth, you’ll do activities and writing prompts like this. Use this to get ready for this summer or just for fun!

This past fall I found myself teaching an intense class on revision. I also found myself with about the same amount of time to complete final revisions on a short story collection that would launch in March (Splendid Anatomies, Veliz Books). What a thing!

Trying something new can be scary! Whether you have written dozens of stories or are just starting your writing journey, Summer Youth at Mac will no doubt be full of new experiences for all of us. You will have the chance to meet people, be in a new space, and try things.

One question I hear time and again from students is a simple one: how to begin? When it comes to facing the blank page, writers develop all kinds of strategies to build momentum: set a timer for 15 minutes, use an app to block use of email and Internet, stop writing in the middle of a sentence.

Stephen Graham Jones's Mongrels is a novel about werewolves. Oh! I've spoiled it. But of course that much is spoiled. We live in a world of hype and trailers and book covers. You might only pick it up because you are looking for a book about werewolves. (You should pick it up either way.)

Crafting titles is a particularly difficult part of writing poetry because a title is the poem’s introduction, and first impressions have high stakes. As a poet, I want my titles to spark a reader’s interest when they’re perusing a table of contents.

Shannon Gibney is a writer, educator, activist, and the author of See No Color (Carolrhoda Lab, 2015), a young adult novel that won the 2016 Minnesota Book Award in Young Peoples' Literature. Gibney is faculty in English at Minneapolis College, where she teaches writing.