Summer 2025
Featuring archival work on Writers on Writing and a portfolio on Craft and Instruction, this issue includes work by: Bill Sweeney, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Nancy Willard, Otto Carmichael, Molly Gaudry, K. Srilata, Meghan O’Rourke, Maxine Kumin, Edward Senior, Charles Angoff, LB Thompson, Vivian Shipley, Margaret E. Ashida, John Forbes, Barney Oldfield, Toi Derricotte, Walter Carroll, Ted Kooser, María García Teutsch, Silvio Sirias, Judith Strasser, Bertram A. Lewis, Ada Jean Mecham, Donald Anderson, Doug Anderson, Matt Gallagher, Sam Hamill, Peter Molin, Marilyn Nelson, Stacey Peebles, Katsumi Sugawara, Kwame Dawes, Linda Pastan, Erin Bad Hand, Uche Okonkwo, Ladette Randolph, Heather Lundine, Sherrie Flick, and Chaun Ballard. Cover art by Madeline Cass.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Essays
Casa: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood
Judith Ortiz Cofer
Telling Time
Nancy Willard
Stephen Crane in Havana
Otto Carmichael
Naked as the Day I Was Born
Molly Gaudry
A Note on Process
Meghan O’Rourke
Writing in Multiple Genres
Maxine Kumin
How to Make an Editor Sorry
Edward Senior
A Williams Memoir
Charles Angoff
Torpor: A meditation on literary hibernation
LB Thompson
Frogs and Frozen Zen
Margaret E. Ashida
I Go For Free
Barney Oldfield
An Afternoon With O. Henry’s Widow
Walter Carroll
Lying for the Sake of Making Poems
Ted Kooser
The Truth According to Your Characters: An Interview with Julia Alvarez
María García Teutsch and Silvio Sirias
The Envied Ones
Bertram A. Lewis
Psycho- Pathological Fiction
Ada Jean Mecham
On War Writing: A Roundtable Discussion
Donald Anderson, Doug Anderson, Matt Gallagher, Sam Hamill, Peter Molin, Marilyn Nelson, and Stacey Peebles
Take It, Eat
Kwame Dawes
Washing My Hands of the Ink
Linda Pastan
Crafting Narrative Tension
Uche Okonkwo
Before You Start to Write For Real
Ladette Randolph, Heather Lundine, and Sherrie Flick
The Complexities of Personhood: An Essay on Craft, and the Soul
Chaun Ballard
Poetry
Dedicated To
Bill Sweeney
A Brief History of Writing
K. Srilata
A Poetry Reading in Connecticut
Vivian Shipley
Speed, a pastoral
John Forbes
To the reader: On publishing a poem about the abuse in my childhood
Toi Derricotte
When Life Interferes with Art
Judith Strasser
Wiping the Tears
Erin Bad Hand