The Messenger

photo by captain.orange at http://www.flickr.com/photos/10527553@N03/5150828447/sizes/m/in/photostream/

by Ed Davis on January 4, 2012

My favorite column in Poets & Writers is “Why We Write.” Although I used to read the premier writers’ magazine mainly for publishing news and markets, I’m much more likely to read it nowadays to find the faith and inspiration to continue to write fiction for a world that increasingly doesn’t seem to want or need it.
The Great Silence
A poet friend and I were recently e-mailing each other new poems to read and critique, and she mentioned how her work usually meets with silence. Yesterday, a fiction writer correspondent said pretty much the same thing, only in reference to marketing: […]

Share

{ 2 comments }

A Book for Both Genders: Healing Through Writing

Post image for A Book for Both Genders: Healing Through Writing

by Ed Davis on November 17, 2011

The Moment I Knew
When it happens, you feel something crawling up your spine to stroke the back of your neck. Your mouth goes dry; electricity quivers inside arms and legs. Something clicks in the brain and you suddenly know something you didn’t only seconds ago. The veil parts and you are offered this opportunity, this gift. Forgiveness. Understanding. Love. Such moments are dramatized in a new book called The Moment I Knew: Reflections from Women on Life’s Defining Moments ($14.95 from www.sugatipublications.com), a collection of brief, compelling essays and poems by women from six countries. It’s a book men should […]

Share

{ 3 comments }

The Emporium/Underdog Café: Lost in Time

Thumbnail image for The Emporium/Underdog Café: Lost in Time October 29, 2011

 The Real Thing
Talk about creaky wooden floors and funky circa-1965 style! Consuming two formerly side-by-side shops at 233 Xenia Avenue in Yellow Springs, Ohio, the Emporium/Underdog Café is heaven for writers of every stripe (as well as artists, activists, academics and thinkers). Any time of day you can spot laptops, tablets and good old-fashioned pen and paper being wielded in quirky comfort. Other coffee shops might have better coffee, cutesier cupcakes and frou-frou sandwiches, but E/UDC has the “meat and potatoes.” Substance over style is apparent in every aspect of the place, from funky ambiance to the luscious homemade food, […]

Share
Read the full article →

Memoir 101: Demons and Angels

September 23, 2011

A Place to Start
My Comp I (English 111) classes at Sinclair Community College are writing memoir essays this week. For a lot of reasons, it’s a loaded medium. I’m trying to play fair by not requiring anything of my students that I don’t require of myself. Therefore, I’m writing one, too.
Memoir, while easier in some ways than argumentative thesis-and-support essays, can be a challenge for seasoned writers, much less newbies. Writing honestly about your own life is daunting, especially when students are given a criteria sheet containing everything from organization to pacing and significance (see link to Narrative Writing link, […]

Share
Read the full article →

Stoney Creek Roasters: Floating Writers’ Retreat

August 25, 2011

My Secret “Fishing Hole”
I seriously considered not telling. But the matchmaker in me overruled my greed for peace and quiet; I love to recommend the exact right book for someone, introduce two people that wind up friends for life, or hook someone up with the exact music that he/she needs. So I’ve decided to tell you about one of the best public places I’ve ever found to write, rest, eat, drink and dream. Thirty or forty feet above a peaceful, wandering stream, Stoney Creek Roasters in Cedarville, Ohio, is one of the best places I’ve ever found to fish for […]

Share
Read the full article →

Birmingham Arts Journal Excerpts Israel Jones

July 27, 2011
Thumbnail image for Birmingham Arts Journal Excerpts Israel Jones

A Publishing Surprise
A real perk of my novel Running from Mercy: The Psalms of Israel Jones winning the 2010 Hackney Award for the Novel was having an excerpt published in Birmingham Arts Journal (beginning on page 38 of the issue, or page 39 of the online PDF). Since the Hackney organization does not offer publication, I was pleased when contest spokesperson Myra Crawford informed me that BAJ would be contacting me in order to publish an excerpt. In my post-winning euphoria, I didn’t pay much attention and at first thought the periodical was a newspaper; therefore I was a bit […]

Share
Read the full article →

The Virtues of Small Press: Live at Antioch Writers’ Workshop 2011

July 18, 2011
Thumbnail image for The Virtues of Small Press: Live at Antioch Writers’ Workshop 2011

Dropping In

Last Wednesday, July 13, I had the good fortune of dropping in on Kevin Watson’s Editor’s Session at the 2011 Antioch Writers’ Workshop here in lovely Yellow Springs, Ohio. While it’s evolved through the years, AWW has always maintained its high-quality and insistence on great faculty-student relations. And while the study of craft is the centerpiece, there are always presentations by agents and editors. On this day, it was the editing I was interested in.
Editor in Sneakers
Having recently submitted a short story collection to Press 53, I was eager to hear its chief editor speak. After all, anyone with […]

Share
Read the full article →

Great Summer Reading: A Writer to Watch

June 23, 2011
Thumbnail image for Great Summer Reading: A Writer to Watch

You’ve no doubt got all your summer reading lined up already; however, it you’re like me, there’s always room on the shelf for another great read. Valerie Nieman’s third novel, Blood Clay, is the deeply moving, elegantly-constructed story of what happens when extraordinary violence happens to ordinary people; however, the story is about much more than violence. Set in the small-town world of Saul County, North Carolina, it encompasses a great deal of history, private and public, as we come to know many of the denizens of Taberville and the surrounding region extremely well.

Tracey Gaines and Dave Fordham, twin protagonists, […]

Share
Read the full article →

Automatic Writing: Between the Keystrokes

June 6, 2011

I feel cautiously optimistic about how things are developing with the new novel I’m writing—and that’s truly the right word—developing—for I’m trying to get out of the way and let the story flow right through me at this point. In ways, that seems like the opposite of what I’ve been doing, keeping a novel journal of how I think things might go, where they’re heading.  But sometimes I’m way wrong; at least once the book took over and told me where it was going (an important death)—and while that might be the most dramatic example, it’s far from […]

Share
Read the full article →

The Writer in Winter: Less is More

May 21, 2011
Thumbnail image for The Writer in Winter: Less is More

While reading Brooke Allen’s review in The New York Time Book Review of Nicholas Delbanco’s Lastingness: the Art of Old Age, I began thinking about how my own creative process has changed as I’ve aged. At fifty-nine, I’ve pared it down to “deep essentials,” as others apparently have. But what does that mean?
Inception vs. Reception
Delbanco claims that while, in youth “it’s the reception of the piece and not its production that counts. But to the aging writer, painter or musician…it no longer seems as important that the work be sold.” That rings true for me. While I still seek markets […]

Share
Read the full article →

← Previous Entries