On the ninth anniversary of poet Lucille Clifton’s death, her eldest daughter, Sidney Clifton, felt a strong desire to be back in her family’s former home in Baltimore. She decided to call the owner, who told her the house had been put up for sale th

For the past five years we’ve dedicated this space to featuring five debut authors who have lived a good deal of life before publishing their first books. From the start our aim was to highlight not one path—not some mythical road, paved with youthfu

Age: 52. Residence: Chicago. Book: Valentine (Harper, March 2020), a novel that explores the lingering effects of a brutal crime on the women of a West Texas oil town in the 1970s. Agent: Samantha Shea of Georges Borchardt, Inc. Editor: Emily Griffin

On September 24, 2009, sixteen-year-old student Derrion Albert was beaten to death outside of Christian Fenger Academy High School, on the South Side of Chicago, in broad daylight. Though there were many witnesses, one of whom captured the attack on

Age: 71. Residence: Saint Louis, Missouri. Book: The Last Children of Mill Creek (Belt Publishing, April 2020), a memoir about survival, as told from the viewpoint of a watchful young girl. Agent: None. Editor: Martha Bayne. I THINK it is fair to say

Age: 55. Residence: San Francisco. Book: A Good Family (Graydon House, July 2020), a domestic thriller about a glamorous Big Pharma executive who pleads guilty in a whistleblower lawsuit and enters Alderson women’s prison, only to suspect that one of

Age: 55. Residence: New York City. Book: We Were Lucky With the Rain (Four Way Books, September 2020), a collection of stories about people grappling with emotional isolation, economic insecurity, and family fragmentation. Agent: None. Editor: Martha

Age: 71. Residence: Charlottesville, Virginia. Book: 2nd Chance (New Issues Poetry Prize, New Issues Poetry & Prose, October 2020), a collect ion of poems. Agent: None. Editor: Nancy Eimers. I AM working on a long ruminative poem, like several in 2nd

IN THE fall of 2020, when the United States seemed to be reckoning with multiple points of inflection—the COVID-19 pandemic, a highly contested election season, the #PublishingPaidMe conversation about inequities in book advances, and widespread prot

IF YOU follow any number of poets on social media, you’ve probably seen a version of this photo: the pages of a collection in progress, spread across the floor or perhaps taped on a wall. Sometimes it’s an orderly line across the room, sometimes a fl

WHEN campus closed suddenly in mid-March because of the COVID-19 pandemic, I filled bags with books from my office—ones I would need for teaching online and others I planned on reading. My kids’ school was next to close, and I recognized that my imag