Inspired by the tradition of craft lectures at the conference, we have begun to publish essays on poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and playwriting as a resource for the larger writing community.
We’re grateful to the Tennessee Arts Commission for the Arts Build Communities grant that made this venture possible!
If you want to see your (paid!) work here, good news: We are open for submissions! Deadline October 15: https://sewaneewritersconference.submittable.com/submit.
ESSAYS
Blood and Water: Metaphor and Cognition
By April Pawar
Let’s begin with a parasite that does not ask for permission. In John Donne’s metaphysical poem, “The Flea”, a minuscule bloodsucker bites the lover’s muse. Instantly, the flea’s abdomen transforms into an unlikely metaphor: a courtroom, a seduction, a collision course.
Play to Play: Parsing the Methods by which Plays Become Other Plays
By Talene Monahon
For as long as there have been plays, there have been adaptations of other plays. Shakespeare was famously a prolific adaptor—most notably, King Lear is an adaptation of an earlier drama, King Leir. Theater, perhaps more than any other genre of writing, is endlessly interested in retelling familiar stories from new angles. Adaptations make up a sort of netherworld in which living playwrights converse energetically with the dead.
For much of human history, across the globe, poetry was synonymous with rhythmic language. By the twentieth century, however, the adherence to rhythm or meter gave way, and the poetic line rushed into the vacuum, becoming the fundamental formal unit distinguishing poetry from prose.
A few years ago, I taught a class entitled “Creative Writing from Real Life,” and we had just finished our first unit—on nonfiction—Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried marked our turn to fiction.
Third-Person Omniscient Narration: Be the God of Your Stories
By Sakinah Hofler
Stay away from the big, omniscient, third-person narrator! That’s the advice I’ve heard given to writers (including myself) for most of my writing life. ...
Three years ago, I met my first "anti-disciplinary" artist. Her name was Arielle Julia Brown, and she was an artist and curator based in Philadelphia. ...
