This entry is part of Getaway Reads, a weekly e-mail series curated by Stephanie Cawley that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty. Big Scenes by James Richardson And what was King Kong ever going to do with Fay Wray or Jessica Lange, but climb, climb, climb, and get shot down? No Wonder Gulliver’s amiably chatting with that six-inch woman in his palm. Desire’s huge, there’s really nowhere to put it in our small world that it will stay put: might as well just talk. Rage also, and fear, and elation are ... Read More...
Getaway Reads: Crossing the Milky Way by Anndee Hochman
This entry is part of Getaway Reads, a weekly e-mail series curated by Stephanie Cawley that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty. Crossing the Milky Way by Anndee Hochman Here is the baby: smell of sourdough, brown butter, mown wheat, warm earth. Moist anemone hands, the toes you nibble as if they are nubs of maple sugar. Behind the closed bedroom door, talk ripples up from downstairs. You rock in the hand-painted chair. Here is the hunger, legible in her wide blue eyes, garnet blossom of a mouth, the cry that bubbles ... Read More...
Getaway Reads: Two Poems by Stephen Dunn
This entry is part of Getaway Reads, a weekly e-mail series curated by Stephanie Cawley that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty. Don't Do That by Stephen Dunn It was bring-your-own if you wanted anything hard, so I brought Johnnie Walker Red along with some resentment I’d held in for a few weeks, which was not helped by the sight of little nameless things pierced with toothpicks on the tables, or by talk that promised to be nothing if not small. But I’d consented to come, and I knew what part of the house their ... Read More...
Getaway Reads: Who Will Tell My Story? by Mimi Schwartz
Murphy Writing of Stockton University Presents This entry is part of Getaway Reads, an e-mail series curated by Stephanie Cawley that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty. Who Will Tell My Story? by Mimi Schwartz I was away on a writing retreat this January, the first time since my husband Stu died last August that I was able to push away the loss and sense of chaos and feel more like a self I remembered. I vowed not to do e-mail, but like Adam biting the apple, I did it anyway. “Did you pay your quarterly taxes ... Read More...
Getaway Reads: Two Poems by BJ Ward
This entry is part of Getaway Reads, a weekly e-mail series curated by Stephanie Cawley that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty. The Star-Ledger by BJ Ward 287 was the long road to the newspaper plant my black-handed father would ride beneath the weight of a night sky. A father who works the night shift knows that weight, how it accumulates from within when his mistakes and debt begin to press on his children and ... Read More...
Getaway Reads: Fifty-Fifty by Roberta Clipper
This entry is part of Getaway Reads, a weekly e-mail series curated by Stephanie Cawley that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty. Fifty-Fifty by Roberta Clipper That’s what I call myself. My mother’s a mongrel. That’s what she says: ancestors from so many different parts of Europe that she can’t tell where she got the same name as Dad’s. It’s true! It’s on her birth certificate—Gillian Ann Gill. As southern as the William Williamses and Jo Ann Joneses of the West. I tease her: “If you’d hyphenated it, you’d be Jill ... Read More...
Getaway Reads: from Killing the Messenger by Thomas Peele
This entry is part of Getaway Reads, a weekly e-mail series curated by Stephanie Cawley that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty. from Killing the Messenger by Thomas Peele Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe. --Frederick Douglass Him. That kid. Over there. In the skullcap. With the iPod. Him. That ... Read More...
Getaway Reads: The Need for Character by Richard K. Weems
This entry is part of Getaway Reads, a weekly e-mail series curated by Stephanie Cawley that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty. The Need for Character by Richard K. Weems The virtue of hope, in Enoch, was made of two parts suspicion and one part lust…He wanted, some day, to see a line of people waiting to shake his hand. --Flannery O’Connor, “Enoch and the Gorilla” Until this morning, my story was the same as any other yokel leaning on the brass rail at 9 a.m. Until this morning, there was no reason to ... Read More...
Getaway Reads: Poems by Lois Marie Harrod
This entry is part of Getaway Reads, a weekly e-mail series curated by Stephanie Cawley that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty. Doorknobs by Lois Marie Harrod Someday one will turn and slip—hot and heavy from your hand and you will hear its twin clunk on the other side of the bedroom and there will be the door between the two of you, as it has been, apparently, before ... Read More...
A vacation-inspired writing prompt
Here's a vacation-inspired writing prompt for you to try from one of the Atlantic City Shore Thing Writing Getaways. Consider it an Autumn gift! It includes options for writing fiction, nonfiction and poetry, and of course one of my "Challenges for the Delusional." Have fun and be daring. You won't break anything, except, perhaps a mild case of writer's block. "For a while we pondered whether to take a vacation or get a divorce. We decided that a trip to Bermuda is over in two weeks, but a divorce is something you always have." ~ Woody Allen "No man needs ... Read More...