The Prairie Schooner Blog

"Monsters are replaced by monitors": an interview with Jaylan Salah

pclark — Fri, 03 Jul 2020 18:06:45 +0000

by Carol Smallwood

Award-winning writer Jaylan Salah is a poet, translator, content expert, and film critic.Workstation Bluesis a collection from the cubicle for white-collar workers worldwide passing the time between meetings and computer screens. The poems blur: monsters are replaced by monitors, flame-throwers by LED lights, and swords by client comments. Cristina Deptula, executive editor of Synchronized Chaos Magazine,http://synchchaos.comcommented: “With energy and spunk, Jaylan Salah celebrates imagination, beauty, and most of all, freedom through her poetry and prose.”

Smallwood: What is your educational, literary background and when did you begin to write prose and poetry?

Black Lives Matter

pclark — Thu, 11 Jun 2020 19:17:46 +0000

This statement was originally published in the June 5th edition of the Prairie Schooner newsletter.

"So You Wanna Win A Book Prize" w/ Gbenga Adeoba

jbaldwin — Sat, 14 Mar 2020 20:35:26 +0000

by Jamaica Baldwin

Our final "So You Wanna Win A Book Prize" interview of the season is with poet 'Gbenga Adeoba, the 2019 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets Winner. This is the last of a series of illuminating conversations between PS Book Prize Coordinator Jamaica Baldwin and writers who have played the book prize game and won! There are only 2 days left to submit to the Raz-Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize. Click here for full details. Read on for Baldwin's conversation with 'Gbenga Adeoba. Click here to buy Adeoba's Prize-winning collection Exodus.

Walk It Like You Talk It: #fivewordfridays

astrosnider — Fri, 06 Mar 2020 18:13:19 +0000

a series of vocabulary-based prompts

by Ashley Strosnider

Tackled the exercise below? Come up with something brilliant or hilarious? Tweet us a favorite line or phrase @theSchooner!

My mom describes horrible things as “dreadful.” One of my friends calls excellent things “dynamite.” Neither of these feels quite right in my mouth, but I’m still charmed when they say them. Many of my favorite people to talk to have their own go-to vocabularies, their own distinctive ways of talking. (Of course, it’s entirely possible that everyone does, and I just don’t talk to everyone, so I wouldn’t know.) But it’s true on the page, too. Good writing, as the saying goes, just hits different. Some poems simply sound like “oh, of course she wrote this.” And when some characters open their mouths, I wouldn’t mind if the dialogue went on for pages and pages.

Sorry to Miss Y'all at #AWP20

astrosnider — Tue, 03 Mar 2020 23:39:50 +0000

but you can still get some great deals at bookfair prices

Prairie Schooner and the APBF will have a significantly reduced presence at this year’s AWP Conference in San Antonio, as most of our staff will not be traveling.

"So You Wanna Win A Book Prize" w/ Tjawangwa Dema

pclark — Tue, 03 Mar 2020 21:28:35 +0000

by Jamaica Baldwin

For the next several weeks, visit the blog for illuminating conversations between PS Book Prize Coordinator Jamaica Baldwin and writers who have played the book prize game and won! We're currently seeking submissions for the Raz-Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize. Click here for full details. Read on for Baldwin's conversation with Tjawangwa Dema. Click here to buy Dema's Sillerman Prize-winning collection The Careless Seamstress.

Cast a New Light (or, why Kwame banned "gloaming": #fivewordfridays

astrosnider — Thu, 27 Feb 2020 23:09:09 +0000

a series of vocabulary-based prompts

by Ashley Strosnider

Tackled the excercise below? Come up with something brilliant or hilarious? Tweet us a favorite line or phrase @theSchooner!

Last week, one of our new interns was reading submissions, and he stopped and said, “I just read two poetry submissions in a row with the phrase ‘a jealous moon.’ What are the odds?” Unfortunately, the odds are not so long.

A few years back, our Editor in Chief, Kwame Dawes, shared a tweet a day in a series he called “Memos to Poets,” and he called out a few words he was seeing too often.

#13: This just in: “Gloaming” has been banned from poetry, especially Irish themed poems

So You Wanna Win A Book Prize?

astrosnider — Wed, 26 Feb 2020 17:24:30 +0000

An Interview with Venita Blackburn

by Jamaica Baldwin

For the next several weeks, visit the blog for illuminating conversations between PS Book Prize Coordinator Jamaica Baldwin and writers who have played the book prize game and won! We're currently seeking submissions for the Raz-Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize. Click here for full details. Read on for Baldwin's conversation with Venita Blackburn, who won the PS Book Prize for her story collection Black Jesus and Other Superheroes.

Welcome to #fivewordfridays

astrosnider — Thu, 20 Feb 2020 22:46:37 +0000

a series of vocabulary-based prompts

by Ashley Strosnider

Tackled the excercise below? Come up with something brilliant or hilarious? Tweet us a favorite line or phrase @theSchooner!

Good writing strives toward many things—often it’s momentum, stakes, and surprise. Ideally, when you’re writing carefully (or at the very least, when you’re revising!), you’re aware of the language of your work, instead of only the content of the idea or the narrative thrust, and you’re making careful, interesting, and economical selections to keep a poem or a story moving, and to keep a reader moving along with it. You brilliant writer, you, of course you choose your words wisely.

So You Wanna Win A Book Prize?

pclark — Tue, 11 Feb 2020 22:17:21 +0000

An Interview with Luisa Muradyan

by Jamaica Baldwin

Exciting news! The PS Blog is back from hiatus. We're kicking things off with a revival of our fun and useful "So You Wanna Win A Book Prize?" interview series. For the next several weeks, visit the blog for illuminating conversations between PS Book Prize Coordinator Jamaica Baldwin and writers who have played the book prize game and won! Don't forget, we're currently seeking submissions for the Raz-Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize. Click here for full details. Read on for Baldwin's conversation with Luisa Muradyan, who won the PS Book Prize for her poetry collection American Radiance.