The Wednesday Web Browser for Writers

  • Are you keeping up with Short Story Month? Be sure to check the #ssm2011 hashtag on Twitter!
  • Another segment of Short Story Month: the Collection Giveaway Project on the Fiction Writers Review (FWR) blog. Check out the ever-growing list of participating bloggers (and the titles that are available for YOU to win!).
  • Also on FWR: tremendous story-focused content. Among my faves: Laura Furman on choosing the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories; Anne Stameshkin on Lesley Dormen’s “The Old Economy Husband”; and yours truly on Five Ways to Celebrate Short Stories.
  • Speaking of short stories, I’m proud to announce that my story, “The Kiss,” is now live on Literary Mama.
  • More wonderful writing exercises from Midge Raymond.
  • Dinty W. Moore recommends six memoirs.
  • And while we’re on the subject of nonfiction: Linda K. Wertheimer shares lessons learned at the recent Grub Street Muse & the Marketplace conference in Boston.
  • More from Massachusetts: This weekend will bring the Massachusetts Poetry Festival. Although I can’t attend, one of my poems will be there, stitched within The Poetry Dress. (Thanks to Chloe Yelena Miller for bringing this project to my attention.)
  • Quotation of the Week: Sarah Stone

    I met Sarah Stone many years ago at a conference of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, and she has long impressed me as a very smart writer. So I wasn’t surprised to see this words of wisdom show up on her Twitter feed sometime this past week:

    #writing note: put your people between a rock and a hard place. Don’t put them on a rock and then have them think about it.

    SO TRUE!

    The Wednesday Web Browser for Writers

    Between an extended weekend in Massachusetts, an especially busy week at the day job, and a conference presentation coming up (gulp!) tomorrow, this hasn’t been the best week for me so far as my keeping an eye on the Web goes. But I’ve done my best, and I’m happy to share these finds with you.

  • My trip to Massachusetts was prompted by the always-excellent Muse & the Marketplace conference that is organized by the fine folks at Grub Street, Inc. Click here to read an interview with Grub’s founder, Eve Bridburg, and then move on to Nina Badzin’s conference recap. (You can also scroll through all of the #Muse2011 posts on Twitter to get a sense of some of what went on and the inspiration and camaraderie that the conference engendered.)
  • I loved Ellen Meeropol’s recent blog post on moral ambiguity in fiction (and I’d have loved it even without its generous mention of my story, “For Services Rendered.”
  • Tayari Jones (who will be our Q&A guest in the June issue of The Practicing Writer) shares “Five Things I Wish I Had Known When I Published My First Book.”
  • Time to remind you that May is Short Story Month! I’m proud to be part of the team at Fiction Writers Review that is celebrating with a slew of projects and special posts. Author and editor Matt Bell has a nice collection of other participating sites/blogs/etc. over on his homepage. Please remember that there’s still plenty of time for you to enter the short-story collection giveaway right here on Practicing Writing (copies of Midge Raymond’s Forgetting English and my own Quiet Americans are up for the winning).