One Summer Day: An Essential Short Story Reading List for Every Writer, by Caitlin O’Brien
Throughout my college career as a creative writing major, I’ve been taught to read as a writer. Instead of simply enjoying a story for what it is, I look at it with a magnifying glass in hand, trying to decipher what the author has done and how. Once you can identify...
Five Spoken Word Resources for Young Writers by Blythe Baird
1. Young Chicago Authors (Chicago, IL) YCA is the nonprofit birthplace of “Louder Than A Bomb,” now recognized as the largest youth slam in the world. YCA provides a variety of free programs for young writers such as weekly open mics, and poetry/hip hop workshops. YCA...
Perfectly Good White Boy by Carrie Mesrobian, Reviewed by Grant Brengman
Perfectly Good White Boy Carrie Mesrobian Carolrhoda LAB 2014 ISBN 9781467734806 304 pages Reviewed by GRANT BRENGMAN Writer of the best book of 2013 according to Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly, Carrie Mesrobian excellently renders the high school party life,...
Writing An Authentic Experience by Anna Kranz
In order to represent the diversity of our world, writers should strive to try to increase the diversity in the casts they write. It’s not that every story ever written from now has to be about a certain marginalized group, it’s just something the literary community...
Well, Well, Well… We Won an Award!
Runestone has been selected as the winner for content in this year’s Association of Writers and Writing Program’s National Program Directors’ Prize for Undergraduate Literary Magazines. The judge for content, Sharon Dolin, Director, Writing About Art in Barcelona,...
From Good to Great: Two Editing Strategies for Your Fiction
As writers, we all know that a first draft of a piece is far from the final product. It often takes multiple drafts before you reach a point of satisfaction. Even if you’re a big planner, like me, you will go through at least five drafts before you are remotely happy...
Ocular Proof, by Martha Ronk, reviewed by Corva León
Ocular Proof Marth Ronk Omnidawn Publishing October, 2016 ISBN 978-1-63243-025-0 80 pages Reviewed by Corva León The opening poem of Ocular Proof vividly describes a photograph and the actions of the viewer, beginning with “The tree azalea overwhelms...
Music and Story by McKinley Johnson
Music as a form of storytelling has been part of human culture since time immemorial, and something as simple as a few note can tell us a lot about a person or a world. We can watch a love story unfold over piano with sparing use of instruments like in Pixar’s Up, or...
Prompt: verb by Debbie Johnson-Hill
prompt: verb. assist or encourage (a hesitating speaker) to say something American author Jonah Lehrer once said, “Creativity is a spark. It can be excruciating when we’re rubbing two rocks together and getting nothing. And it can be intensely satisfying when the...
The Patron Saint of Lost Comfort Lake, by Rachel L. Coyne, Reviewed by Caitlin O’Brien
Patron Saint of Lost Comfort Lake Rachel L. Coyne New Rivers Press 2015 ISBN 9780898233162 168 pages Reviewed by CAITLIN O'BRIEN Rachel L. Coyne’s second novel, The Patron Saint of Lost Comfort Lake, centers around a woman learning to accept the things that cannot be...
Community Building Behind Our Screens
Why are you reading this? Why are you even on the internet? You wanted to build a community with someone. You wanted to reach through that ethereal bond of the internet and be able to say, “Yes, you get me. Please metaphorically hold my hand through the next episode...
We Slept Here, by Sierra DeMulder, Reviewed by Blythe Baird
We Slept Here Sierra DeMulder Button Poetry January 2015 ISBN 978-0989641586 58 pages Reviewed by BLYTHE BAIRD Sierra DeMulder reflects on recovering from the trauma of an abusive relationship in We Slept Here with stunning yet jarring imagery. This collection never...
