Top Five: Penelope Schott
Writing-Related Top Five
- frozen fog
- the twig inside the fog
- sucking the frozen twig
- ice as sugar
- the sweetness of fog
— Penelope Schott
Top Five: Penn Stewart
Top Five Reasons Not to Write
- Fear of the truths you may discover
- Doubt about your ability
- Uncertainty about subject
- Not enough time
- Laziness
— Penn Stewart
Top Five: Maryanne Hannan
Top Five Favorite Writing Moments
- feeling a poem start up
- getting good lines from nowhere
- nailing the title
- the post-poem euphoria
- revising (after the crash)
Top Five: Caitlin Barasch
Top Five Favorite Character Names
- Jessica, because it has an ambiguously gendered nickname: Jess or Jesse. It can supplement the tough, cynical street urchin you’ve attempted to create. Also, watch how she introduces herself and what her mother calls her.
- James, because it’s a sexy name and it sets the right mood for certain kind of scenes, if you catch my drift.
- Kate, because it’s a variation of my actual name, and I can use it in a story that is semi-autobiographical and yet still claim it is entirely fictional.
- Lee, because everyone needs a villain who also may or may not go by the name of your ex-boyfriend.
- Eduardo, because a longing for travel, foreign adventures, and foreign people cannot be squashed. This longing therefore must factor into a character your protagonist will pine after, for all that they represent.
— Caitlin Barasch
Top Five: Adrian Gibbons Koesters
Writing-Related Top Five
- Pentel Needle Point Pens, .05 mm.
- Large red softcover Moleskine notebooks
- Making mistakes like “the great is assured” instead of “the grant is assured”
- Broken sonnets
- Portability
— Adrian Gibbons Koesters
Top Five: G. K. Adams
Writing-Related Top Five
- thick skin
- determination
- attention to life
- a sense of the absurd
- a functioning computer
— G. K. Adams
Top Five: Stephen Koster
Top Five Words to Avoid While Writing, at Risk of Pain, Death, and Awful Writing
- Suddenly
- Narrative (studying literature has made me despise this)
- Because
- Fleeting
- Dark (though I am guilty of using it all the time)
— Stephen Koster
Top Five: Lisa Cheby
Writing-Related Top Five
- ink unites with paper
- hunger after a poem so urgent I forget to eat
- finding the lesson in a poem is not what I thought I was writing
- coffee mug stains on table and pages
- letting the poem find a home in the world
— Lisa Cheby
Top Five: Robert Cunningham
Writing-Related Top Five
- Striking ideas against each other to create sparks that ignite words into a firestorm.
- Digging through the archives for the significant shard.
- Transmitting the shine of a beautiful concept to others.
- Giving the quite shadow a voice.
- Being alone.
Top Five: Kim Peter Kovac
Top five poets with five-letter names
that you will recognize without a first name
- Auden
- Basho
- Celan
- Rilke
- Simic
— Kim Peter Kovac
Matter Press is now offering private flash fiction workshops and critiques of flash fiction collections here.
Upcoming:
03/23 • Kenneth Pobo
03/30 • Roberta Allen
04/06 • Avril Shakira Villar
04/13 • TBD
04/20 • TBD
04/27 • TBD
05/04 • TBD
05/11 • TBD
05/18 • TBD
05/25 • TBD
06/01 • TBD
06/08 • TBD
06/15 • TBD
06/22 • TBD
06/29 • TBD
07/06 • TBD
07/13 • TBD
07/20 • TBD
07/27 • TBD
08/03 • TBD
08/10 • TBD
08/17 • TBD
08/24 • TBD
08/31 • TBD
09/07 • TBD
09/14 • TBD
09/21 • TBD