First of all: yes, your professors are right when they tell you it is very difficult to get a tenure track teaching job at a college or university. It is very, very […]
Advice for Writers Getting the MFA
Top-Five Tools for Suspense in Creative Nonfiction
Originally posted on Lisa Lanser Rose:
Sometimes when working on a personal essay or memoir we flood the engine of our prose. We’re trying hard to be as authentic, accurate, and open as possible, and so include…
Join Us and Add Suspense to Your Life Story
This Saturday I’m teaching a creative nonfiction workshop in which we’ll make our readers shiver. Suspense has got to be the biggest challenge to my daily work as a memoirist, but writing suspenseful prose has also […]
A Doubter in the Church of Poetry
Originally posted on The Literary Life:
Friends, I have a confession to make: I lose faith. Often. Sometimes multiple times a day. And I’m not talking about religious faith, though I have…
It’s Not Your Fault (You Don’t Suck)
Originally posted on The Literary Life:
I talk to people all the time—inside and outside of academia—who don’t have the faintest sense of why it’s so hard to make a living teaching…
Sirens Go For It: Pumped Project Planning
Do you want more support in achieving your creative and professional goals–especially if those dreams meet with discouragement from the people around you and the culture at large? Are you having trouble believing […]
Write to Change the World
—This is an adaptation of a speech given at Florida Gulf Coast University, at the behest of their Creative Writing Club and Sigma Tau Delta society. I feel at home in places […]
I’m Nobody
I’m Nobody! Who are you? Are you – Nobody – too? Then there’s a pair of us! Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know! How dreary – to be – Somebody! How […]
Ask a Siren: When did you first become aware of the possibility of happiness and how did that affect your work as an artist?
Today’s Ask a Siren question comes form a deep soul, and cracks at the very hearts of our being: “When did you first become aware of the possibility of happiness and how did that affect your work as an artist?”
Be the Good You Want to See in the World
I often find the phrase “be the change you want to see in the world” intimidating, because the change I want to see in the world is huge, sweeping, overwhelming, and must […]
The Gloria Sirens 