Writers Recommend

In this online exclusive we ask authors to share books, art, music, writing prompts, films—anything and everything—that has inspired them in their writing. We see this as a place for writers to turn to for ideas that will help feed their creative process.

Tobias Carroll

9.1.16

Music has always played a big part in my writing. I started writing for a theoretical readership when I did a zine about punk and hardcore bands

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Anna Noyes

8.18.16

“The stories I write begin as fragments that spend months or years in the Failure Folder, a limbo where I hide unfinished pieces too raw, unspeakable,

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J. Scott Brownlee

8.11.16

One of my favorite things to tell my students is, The poem is smarter than you. I rarely start writing a poem knowing how it will finish, and even when I think I have a general idea, it rarely turns out to be accurate.

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Amaranth Borsuk

8.4.16

“Because so much of my poetry explores language itself—the ways we shape and are shaped by it—my creative practice often begins with collecting words.

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Anna Solomon

7.28.16

“When I am stuck in the perfection cog—as in, I am rewriting a sentence a million times over even though I’m in a first draft or, I am freaking out and can’t move forward

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Lo Kwa Mei-en

7.21.16

“When I feel like my identity as a writer is threatened by my flaws, failures, and limitations of health, I can become overwhelmed by fear so profound, I

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Patricia Colleen Murphy

7.14.16

“Writing itself is such a solitary act that when I am finishing a project I often feel lonely to the point of distraction. I combat that isolation by surrounding myself

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Jesse Ball

7.7.16
Jesse Ball

“Some of us are in confusion; we labor through it, we perceive it where it isn’t, we see it threefold where it’s thick; we can scarcely say anything at all

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Bob Proehl

6.30.16

“Most of the time when I’m stuck, it’s because I’m trying to get a sentence or a scene to be perfect when it’s too early in the process for perfection. I tell myself

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