Dana Isokawa

2 months ago | pw.org | Dana Isokawa

subscribe by From the March/April 2025 issue ofPoets & Writers Magazine Seventeen years ago, Greg Schutz was sitting in a laundromat in Ann Arbor, Michigan, waiting for the spin cycle to end, working on a short story that he had been struggling with for weeks. He decided to rewrite a scene from a secondary character’s perspective, and “the story unlocked itself,” he says. “New sources of conflict emerged, strange points of tension between two ways of seeing the same situation.

Dec 10, 2024 | pw.org | Dana Isokawa

subscribe by From the January/February 2025 issue ofPoets & Writers Magazine Writing funny stories lies at the center of Tiffany Midge’s artistic practice. “Humor writing is a kind of self-imposed apprenticeship I’ve designed for myself: How can I incorporate humor into poetry? Fiction? An essay?” she says. “And then there is the added challenge of: How can I write humorously about Native issues and topics [in a way that is] accessible to people outside of the culture?

Oct 8, 2024 | pw.org | Dana Isokawa

subscribe by From the November/December 2024 issue ofPoets & Writers Magazine The seeds of Brittany Rogers’s debut poetry collection, Good Dress (Tin House, October 2024), were planted in 2017. At the time, Rogers was working on a manuscript about family, motherhood, and inheritance titled “What Runs in the Blood.” Three years later, however, she felt distant from the poems and decided to start from scratch.

Aug 13, 2024 | pw.org | Dana Isokawa

subscribe by From the September/October 2024 issue ofPoets & Writers Magazine Janelle Bassett’s debut story collection, Thanks for This Riot (University of Nebraska Press, September 2024), opens with a teenage girl visiting an arcade. Angry with her mother’s efforts to protect and control her, embarrassed about having less money than her friends, the girl tries go-kart racing, letting her feelings take over as she prepares to speed off course.

Jun 11, 2024 | pw.org | Dana Isokawa

subscribe by From the July/August 2024 issue ofPoets & Writers Magazine When Shze-Hui Tjoa started writing her debut memoir, The Story Game (Tin House, May 2024), she was interested in exploring people and places that “looked aspirational but were actually problematic within.” Essays from the book, for example, dissect businesses peddling environmentally friendly practices and the colonial history behind Bali’s tourism industry.