Advertise here via BSA Congratulations brave writer! You made a smart move deciding to click onto this page. You’re about to go on an adventure. On this adventure you will choose how much you want to learn about writing! Today…

Lately, I’ve been a little obsessed with the idea of the endless number of stories there are in the world, right this very second. Every window in every house has a story. Every car driving beside me on the highway,…

Listen: Kathleen Rooney – “Robinson’s Hometown” Today we’ve got a poem from Kathleen Rooney called “Robinson’s Hometown.” I love this poem, and I played it for someone before posting it, and she said that it sounds like a message left…

We’ve got a video poem of Bianca Stone’s “You Were Lost in the Delta Quadrant” below, a poem that we featured on the Poem of the Day Podcast in January. Thought you might enjoy hearing this poem in a slightly…

One of the most complicated discussions I have with authors – including myself – is about whether or not to hire an outside PR firm. The reason it’s confusing is because nothing is guaranteed with PR. You’re buying effort and…

By Joseph Michael Owens with recommendations from David W. Bulla, PhD It’s president’s Day and we here at InDigest want to celebrate, specifically, we want to celebrate books about Abraham Lincoln. A former Journalism mentor of mine at Iowa State,…

Due to my unrivaled love of Abraham Lincoln, I’m wishing you a pleasant Presidents Day with a pile of trailers on films about Lincoln. Also, you should probably read Team of Rivals. The opening scene of Young Lincoln (dir. John…

Listen: Amaranth Borsuk – “The Smell of Rain on Surface” Today’s poem is by Amaranth Borsuk. She is the author of a book of poems, Handiwork, selected by Paul Hoover for the 2011 Slope Editions Poetry Prize (forthcoming), a chapbook,…

InDigest editor Dustin Nelson has a new project going, and he needs you to draw him a map of the world. Here are the details from his blog: I’m trying to get a maps project off the ground and I…

You’re writing a novel and it’s going well. Your characters are solid, enfleshed, more real to you than yourself on many days. And this is great, because writing is easier when you’re like that celery stalk in third grade –…

By David S. Atkinson This week I checked our J R by William Gaddis, and afterward, I started thinking. Well, obviously I was also thinking while I was reading; we are talking about Gaddis after all. What I mean is…

“Every character should want something–even if it is only a glass of water.” –Kurt Vonnegut Vonnegut was right, of course. But we need to know more than what our characters want. To truly empathize with our characters, we need to…

An in-depth investigation by Joseph Michael Owens Dustin Luke Nelson made an important discovery yesterday. One that could arguably be said to have changed his life. Dustin discovered A) “Ancient Aliens/Astronauts” are the focus of an actual human-pursued theory, and…

I won’t lie to you. I’ve been totally swamped doing edits on my book over the past month. It’s a tale I’ll eventually tell in one of my videos, of course, but I’m too much in the midst of it…

And now, JFK riding a robotic unicorn on the Moon iPad 3 display reportedly four times the resolution of previous models Is Amazon the death of literary culture? Meet the Next Chipotle: Bombay Bowl Either You Give Grimlock …

It’s your faithful correspondent, John “Sunny Boy” Vorhaus, coming to you live from Sofia, Bulgaria, where I have been hired to recruit and train writers for the Bulgarian version of Married… with Children. Since this whole part of my life,…

There is a saying in writerly circles, that a manuscript can reach a point where it’s been edited to death. The writer has produced so many new drafts that the life has been sucked out of the story, leaving nothing…

In this strange and unsettling video Douglas Kearney reads a poem titled “IS, AIN’T” from his new chapbook SkinMag (which you can preview here). Kearney is also the author of The Black Automaton. IS, AIN’T from Douglas Kearney on Vimeo.…

Listen: Episode #38: Helen DeWitt We missed a week there, but that’s bound to happen. To make it up to you we’re giving you a longer than normal episode that you’re going to love. In Episode #38 we’ve got Helen…

Listen: Maggie Evans – “How Not To Need Someone” Today’s poem, “How Not To Need Someone,” comes from issue #17 of InDigest and was written by Maggie Evans. Maggie is born-and-raised (as instructed, one word) in East Texas, and is…

When you’re an author for children and teens, school visits are an inescapable part of your year. Sometimes they come singly, most often in clumps at various key times: here in Australia, Children’s Book Week in August sees a little…

Write about what you know — that’s one of the fundamental nuggets of wisdom for writers. “But I don’t know anything worth writing about!” you protest. You don’t? Anything is worth writing about if the writer finds something engaging about…

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 Carol L. Gloor is an attorney living in Chicago and Savanna, Illinois. I especially like this poem of hers for its powerful ending, which fittingly uses the legal language of trusts and estates.…

Listen: Lightsey Darst – “Catatonia” Lightsey Darst’s poem “Catatonia” is our featured poem on the podcast today. Maybe it’s a strange one for Valentine’s Day, being a little sadder than anything you’re getting on a cardboard punch out, but it’s…

The Hundred Story House is an interesting public works / public art project that brings free, communal book-lending into a Brooklyn park. It’s an interesting idea. What do you think of it? You can post your thoughts about the project…

Skylight Books wishes everyone a Happy Bookish Valentine’s Day.…

Given today’s date, it seems only appropriate that my post should be about “the L word.” (Love, that is; not lederhosen. We’ll talk about that some other time, when the memory is not so painful. But I digress…) Back to…

Listen: Mark Leidner – “Pearls Before Swine” This poem by Mark Leidner originally appeared in issue #19 of InDigest, and you can read that here. Mark Leidner writes criticism for Poets on Film and is the author of several chapbooks,…

By David S. Atkinson I love being a Rumpus Book Club member. I never know what they’re going to send me, but it’s always different from what I was expecting. Some I dig more than others, but it’s always something…

So you know we’re not happy unless we’re trying something new. Our latest push: gearing up to premier a spanky new Writer Unboxed newsletter in March. This newsletter isn’t a regurgitation of what you’ve already read here. It’ll offer fresh…

These Linked Telescopes Are the Voltron of Astronomy Does a $100K, 550 horsepower SUV have a logical place in the automotive universe? Meet the Mercedes-Benz ML63 AMG 8 successful entrepreneurs explain how to seize the ebook opportunity to grow your…