Holly Lyn Walrath
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New Poetry Workshop: A Feminist Poetry Reading Primer

2/3/2021

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​Dates: March 1-28
Format: Group Workshop (more info)

From Plath to Sexton to Lorde to Walker, women are the backbone of experimental poetics. In this class, we’ll read the work of popular feminist poets and write our own poems inspired by their work. Audre Lorde said, “The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.” By celebrating the work of the women who came before us, this workshop will explore how to dismantle the patriarchal conventions of poetry by diving into the canon of women poets.

Register at the early-bird price of $275 (regular price: $295) before February 15.

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Submitting Your Work: For Poets

12/23/2020

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These days, it might seem superfluous to submit poetry to journals and magazines when you can make a living as an Instapoet instead. But in the world of poetry, having many publications under your belt can be a way to build towards publishing a chapbook or full-length book of poems.
What follows is a step-by-step guide for poets on submitting your work. This is part of a series of articles for new writers who’ve never sent their work out before. While everyone’s process is different, I hope these tips and tricks can be a starting point for you to figure out your submissions process and start getting your work into the world.

Read the full article here . . . 

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Recordings from World Fantasy Convention 2020

11/17/2020

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I had a blast chatting with folks this year at the virtual World Fantasy Convention! It was such an honor to get to answer questions about indie publishing and author marketing, and to get to be on a panel with some of my favorite poets. Here are the recordings for your watching pleasure: 
Poetic Fantasy: 
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Fall 2020 Workshops

8/15/2020

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​Poetry Barn Self-Paced Course: Writing Resistance Through Erasure, Found Text & Visual Poetry
DATE: Ongoing
TIME: Asynchronous, Self-paced
PRICE: $99

Hybrid poetry forms can be a powerful form of resistance. From Jerrod Schwarz’s erasure of Trump’s inaugural speech to Niina Pollari’s black outs of the N-400 citizenship form, contemporary poets are engaging with the world through text, creating new and challenging works of art. Heralded by the rise of the “Instapoet,” visual works are a way to take poetry one step further by crafting new forms and structures that often transcend the page. 

In this four-module independent study workshop, you’ll study the forms of poetry that draw from outside sources and texts, learning how artists are reshaping the narrative of resistance and how to draw from news, media, canonical works, and other found texts to create our own work in conversation with the current world.

Shortly after you register, you’ll receive an email containing an invitation to create an account and begin learning. (Please note: This class does not include feedback or interaction with the instructor or other learners.)
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Writespace: Poetry Critique (Synchronous  1-Day Workshop)
DATE: Saturday, October 10th 1-4pm CST
TIME: Online, Synchronous 
​In this workshop, we'll focus on four fundamentals that editors look for in poetry. It's one thing to write poems, it's another to start sending out your work to publishers. How do you know if the poem "works"? How can you revise a poem so it stands out in a slush pile? We'll focus on reading poetry like an editor, with an eye towards structure, word choice, content, and first and last lines. This is a critique workshop, so participants will be asked to submit up to two poems (max 4 pages) in advance. ​
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Writespace: Introduction to Found Poetry (Online 4-Week Workshop)
DATE: Sunday, October 4th - Sunday, November 1st
TIME: Online, Asynchronous
​Found poetry is an umbrella term encompassing any poem that uses an outside source text to create a new original poem. Found texts may include but are not limited to: Newspapers, books, periodicals, graffiti, other poems, street signs, advertisements, propaganda, online media, Twitter posts, or anything with words that can be rearranged, erased, cut-out, or reformulated to create a new and wholly original piece of poetry. In this workshop, we'll learn the history of erasure and create our own found poems using methods of erasure or blackout, headline poetry, collage, remixing, cutting, cento poems, acrostic or golden shovel poems, and/or found title poems. 

This is a four-week workshop that takes place completely online. Participants will get the chance to write one poem a week and will be required to critique at least 2 other student's work each week. You may want to have a camera or phone with a camera (a scanner works great too) to upload photos of your poems, but this is not a requirement. ​
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Writespace: Journaling Your Way to a Better Writing Life (Online 4-Week Workshop)
DATE: Sunday, November 8th - December 6th
TIME: Online, Asynchronous
​Writers are observers. One way to keep track of your observations and ideas is through a writing journal. In this workshop, we'll cover the basics of journaling for writers. Not just as a method of processing and keeping track of your thoughts, but as a method of improving your writing life and working towards a career as a writer. We'll cover tracking your writing, how to manage large ideas or projects, tracking submissions, creating goals, revising in a journal, and more, all while exploring popular methods of journaling to find the one that works for you. If you feel out of sorts or disorganized in your writing life, this workshop is for you!

This is a four-week workshop that takes place completely online. You may want to purchase a simple notebook to try out the techniques on your own. You'll be asked to share one journaling exercise a week and give feedback on each other's work.
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New Poem at Twisted Moon Mag

8/11/2020

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I have a new poem up at Twisted Moon Mag, Issue 5: We Hold Up Eternity 

You make me into all of your favorite things. Wax-winged, you model my body to your likeness. Everything must be similar, the remains. You step upon my altar, run a finger along my lips, lick the dust from your skin. It tastes like skin cells and sweat and stardust...

Read the whole poem here . . . 


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How to Hook a Reader on the First Page

6/18/2020

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Agents and editors are looking for submissions that quickly set themselves apart. The stand-out submissions are fairly easy to locate. While all of slushing is somewhat subjective (as far as taste goes, we all have different loves and hates), I’ve noticed that there are a couple of things that are distinguishable between the stories I loved from a slush pile and the ones I passed over quickly.

Read the full article here . . .
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New Poem at Write Wild: She Learns How to Disappear

6/1/2020

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She memorizes the little spaces she could hide in --
the white place between letters on the page,
the dashboard — a blushing radio throne . . .


Read the poem at Write Wild . . . 

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New Essay at write Wild: Are Writing Contests Worth Entering?

6/1/2020

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Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about contests and writing fees, in one handy article. Writing contests abound. There are 695 contests on Duotrope’s listing of prizes and contests for poetry alone. There are writing contests run by big magazines and writing contests by little academic journals. Some contests pay a great deal, upwards of thousands of dollars, while others may pay a smaller amount. Some contests come with publication, others are a cash payout only. In some ways, this pay-to-pay model mirrors the way artists submit their work, often asked to pay a fee to be a part of an exhibition or gallery.

Read the whole article here . . . 
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New Story Up at Curious Fictions: Tarot of the Animal Lords

6/1/2020

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There are many ways to play this game. In the forest of secrets, the past is always the first card drawn. To interpret the cards, one must keep in mind the divinatory and symbolic meaning of every single card. This works best in partners—an oracle and a querient. If a card appears upside down, its meaning changes, suggesting the opposite. These other meanings may be seen as yin and yang, black and white, dark and light, but the best oracles learn how to read between the lines...

Read the full story at Curious Fictions . . .
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New Story at Curious Fictions: knick knack, knick knack

5/4/2020

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When you were a child, white skulls used to follow you through the woods. You tried to catch a glimpse of them, but when you turned your head their skeleton bodies would disappear, fading into the canopy. Only their bone-voices remained, clacking through the trees, knick knack, knick knack . . .

Read the full story at Curious Fictions . . . 
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My Favorite Poetry Writing Prompt is Also the Simplest

4/28/2020

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I've read a lot of writing prompts in my time, and they all suck. Seriously. What is with this “Write a poem about a man who finds a dog on the side of the road and then he brings it home and then it eats his shoe . . .” prompt bull-honkey? (Okay, I made that prompt up, but that’s how most of them sound.)

Read the full article here . . . 
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New Poem Up at Eye to the Telescope

4/16/2020

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I have a new poem up at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association mag Eye to the Telescope. It’s called “Now the Patient Recounts the Houses in Her Mind.” This poem is inspired by the work of author Shirley Jackson. It’s a combination of The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

Read it here . . . 
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Creatives, You Need to Slow Down

4/16/2020

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We’re all being forced to slow down right now, and some of us are better at it than others. But I’ve noticed that writers, and creatives in general, are really, really bad at this.

Read the full post here . . . 
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Crafting a Small Poetry Collection

2/1/2020

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I’m reading the poetry book submissions for Interstellar Flight Press, it occurs to me that a lot of writers struggle to put together poems for a collection. But when the right congregation of poems appears, it’s so exciting as an editor. Poems, when collected, have the ability to speak to each other in new and interesting ways not explored in their individuality.

Read the full article here . . . 

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On the Loss of Cursive

1/15/2020

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When I was little, say four or five, I used to make my Mom write out things in cursive on little cards for me. I’d tell her what to write, then sit next to her at the coffee table in our den and watch her fingers and pen make the loops of cursive words, in neat lines with round letters. My mother has excellent penmanship. On the other hand, my father’s handwriting started out graceful and thin, but more spindly the older he got. Soon he switched to making block letters — in all caps. By the time the Parkinson’s had taken over, he was unable to write at all...

Read the full article at Coffeelicious . . . 

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New Medium post: My NaNoWriMo was a Mess

12/18/2019

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Do you ever think as humans we’re just afraid to get our hands dirty? That we’ve engineered our lives to be as perfect, pristine, and efficient as possible? And that maybe, if we aren’t perfect, then we’re failures?

I’m trying to abolish this idea from my creative life. The idea of perfection.

Read the full article here . . .
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The End of the Year Sometimes Sucks for Creatives

11/28/2019

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Around November, Writing Twitter starts talking about the end of the year. It’s NaNoWriMo, so people are often talking about writing anyway. But also, it’s the time of the year when, if you’re a writer in science fiction or fantasy, you should be posting your “What I Published This Year,” or “Awards Eligibility” post.

A lot of writers use this time to celebrate the works they’ve published over the year and encourage others to nominate them for best of lists and prize consideration, like the Pushcart Prize or Hugo Awards. Journal editors on the literary side announce their nominations for the Pushcart around this time. 2019 is also the end of a decade, so now people are also posting encouraging writers to share what they accomplished in the last decade. We’re sharing pics of ourselves in 2009 and 2019 to show the passage of time.

But I know that a lot of creatives struggle with all this.

Read the whole post here . . . 
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Tricking Yourself into Writing

11/27/2019

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I love the above image. It’s a photograph taken at Natural Bridge State Park, where someone has carved this quote from J.R.R. Tolkien into a walking path. J.R.R. Tolkien probably never imagined the life his work has taken on after his death — that someone would take the time to carve his words in a public space. In fact, I know he didn’t.

John Hendrix, an artist, recently posted a quote from Tolkien’s diary while he was writing Lord of the Rings. It reads:

Friday 14 April: ‘I managed to get an hour or two’s writing, and have brought Frodo nearly to the gates of Mordor. Afternoon lawn-mowing. Term begins next week, and proofs of Wales papers have come. Still I am going to continue “Ring” in every salvable moment.’

Read more here . . .
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Reluctantly Writing About Death

11/26/2019

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A year and a few months ago, my father died. Today, I signed a contract for a small poetry book on grief and dealing with my father’s death that is going to be translated into Italian and published in Italy. The world spins in weird ways, I guess.

Before my father died, I always looked on books about the death of a loved one in, I’ll admit, a pretty messed up and slightly dismissive way. I hated cancer memoirs, books that dived headfirst into the nitty-gritty details of death: bodies and hospitals and medicine and the grotesque humanity of grief. Also, there was a connotation with these books. When they were written by women about caring for loved ones, they often got lumped into women’s fiction, whereas a man writing about grief was somehow reinventing the wheel.

Read the full article on Medium . . . 
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New Medium Article: NaNoWriMo Isn’t Just for Books

10/24/2019

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November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), an online community and yearly event where writers make the goal of writing 50,000 words in 30 days. This year, I’m encouraging you to burn the frigging thing down.

Read how here . . . 
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New Medium Article: Does Publishing Short Stories Matter?

10/15/2019

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I have a new article up at Medium today on the economics of short fiction, how commercialism is changing what writers write, & a bit of advice from Shirley Jackson.

“The very nicest thing about being a writer is that you can afford to indulge yourself endlessly with oddness, and nobody can really do anything about it, as long as you keep writing and kind of using it up, as it were.” — Shirley Jackson (“Memory and Delusion,” Published in Let Me Tell You.)​

Read the entire article here . . . 

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New Article at Medium: "Yesterday" As A Metaphor for the Creative Process

10/8/2019

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What if you woke up tomorrow knowing without a doubt you could write a bestseller? Paint a picture worth a million dollars? Release an album that was guaranteed to go to #1 on the charts?

What would you do?

This is the question behind Yesterday, a charming movie that pays homage to the works of The Beatles by erasing them from the world. Yesterday is a “what if” movie — What if The Beatles never existed? Himish Patel (best known for his work on the British soap Eastenders) plays down-on-his-luck musician Jack Malik, who wants someone to like his music other than his best friend Ellie (played by Lily James).
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Read the entire article at Medium . . . 
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The Stages of the Writing Life

9/4/2019

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I'm teaching an online workshop with Gemini Ink in October on The Writing Life. Essentially, we'll cover the four major stages of taking a project from idea to publication. There's a whole lot to cover here, but if you're a newbie this is a great class for you. It also works nicely for those who are looking to reinvent their writing life and add more structure to the chaos.

Register for the class here . . . 

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40 Writing Milestones to Celebrate

8/28/2019

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I have a new article up at Medium today! As a writer, it can be really hard to keep going. One way I keep myself motivated is by celebrating the small things. Sure, I was over the moon the first time I got a poetry acceptance. But I’ve learned that to keep going, you need to celebrate every little step. Every time I hit a new milestone, I try to appreciate that moment, because it validates all the hard work, long hours, and general malaise that being a writer sometimes entails. I love writing, but writing is hard.

Read the whole list here . . . 


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Glimmerglass Girl is One Year Old

8/24/2019

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Today is the one year book anniversary of Glimmerglass Girl, my first chapbook. This little book taught me a lot about being a writer & learning to love what you do. I learned that chapbooks are just as much work to promote as full length poetry books. I learned that getting a lot of interviews doesn't necessarily mean sales. But mostly, I learned that it's really scary to promote something personal, something you love, and that the writing community is one giant group of amazing, supportive people.

Won't you consider buying it? It would make my year to sell out the remaining copies. 

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    Holly Lyn Walrath is a freelance editor and author of poetry, flash fiction, and short fiction. Find her on Twitter @HollyLynWalrath

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    Holly Walrath's books on Goodreads
    Glimmerglass Girl Glimmerglass Girl
    reviews: 15
    ratings: 19 (avg rating 4.21)

    Our Space: Shorts & Poetry from the Houston Community Our Space: Shorts & Poetry from the Houston Community
    reviews: 1
    ratings: 4 (avg rating 4.25)

    In Medias Res: Stories from the In-Between In Medias Res: Stories from the In-Between
    ratings: 2 (avg rating 4.50)

    The 2017 Rhysling Anthology: The Best Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Poetry of 2016 Selected by the Science Fiction Poetry Association The 2017 Rhysling Anthology: The Best Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Poetry of 2016 Selected by the Science Fiction Poetry Association
    reviews: 9
    ratings: 16 (avg rating 4.31)

    Approaching Footsteps Approaching Footsteps
    reviews: 4
    ratings: 9 (avg rating 4.67)

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  • Home
  • Publications
    • Poetry
    • Fiction
    • Glimmerglass Girl
    • Numinose Lapidi
    • The Smallest of Bones
  • Stories
    • The Joy of Baking
    • Mermaid Hunt
    • Confessions of a Tree Nymph
    • Restoration
    • Subscribe at Curious Fictions
    • Buy Print Books
  • Editing
    • December NaNoWriMo Special
    • Writing Resources
  • Blog
  • Contact
    • Press
    • Appearances