The Loft Blog

How do you feel about cemeteries? As a young person they scared me to death (heh), but they have become one of my favorite spots to spend my time. I do happen to be someone who enjoys the spooky and the macabre, but I also see them as a place of quiet beauty and mystery.

Quan Barry's We Ride Upon Sticks is about a high school field hockey team in the late eighties who make a pact with the devil (or Emilio Estevez, in notebook form) under the shadow of the Salem witch trials (they live where they happened).

Emma Harrington continues her series of Publisher Profile interviews by checking in with Graywolf Press editor Chantz Erolin.

“Don’t forget! You have your two best editors hanging on either side of your head,” I tell my WRIT 1301 students. I am met with a combination of blank looks and cocked eyebrows. “I’m talking about your ears.”

My students' eyes widen in disbelief.

Allison Vincent (née Witham) is a writer, teacher, and theater maker. She’s a staff contributor for MN Craft Notes and her fiction has been previously published in Roi Fainéant Literary Press and in the Dirty Girls Come Clean Anthology.

Launching an imprint can be a heavy lift, even during an economical era which is becoming increasingly advantageous for independent creators. Self-publishing allows a writer to retain primary control of how, when and to whom her/his/their work is distributed.

City of Incurable Women, by Maud Casey, is a book about the psychiatric patients of Paris's Salpêtrière Hospital in the 19th century. It's about women diagnosed as hysterical. It is both historical and fictional.

Writing a book is not easy. But getting one published is often even more difficult. The time it takes to query agents and/or publishers who accept unsolicited manuscripts can often accumulate into months of what feels like much wasted effort.

Emma Harrington begins her series of Publisher Profile interviews by checking in Flexible Press publisher and executive editor William E Burleson.

"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.

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.