Why do we write? How do we navigate grief? What gives us hope?
Blog
The Center blog is teeming with tips and inspiration for starting and maintaining your writing practice.
Read Shawna's review of a novel with a built-in writing prompt for you to try.
Shawna Ayoub highlights the technique of using multiple narrators to foster compassion in a story, and offers an exercise so you can practice doing the same.
Shawna Ayoub moves "beyond the book review" in not only recommending great books by diverse writers, but highlighting a technique to apply to your own writing.
Shawna Ayoub highlights the strength of character and intuition in Jennifer Givhan's new novel, and offers a writing exercise to help us achieve a similar effect in our own work.
Shawna Ayoub explores Lisa Kwong's memoir as an example of using chronology to organize a life story, and offers a three-step exercise you can apply to yours.
Shawna Ayoub explores a retelling of a beloved classic and points out how retellings can provide structure and an end point from the start of writing.
Writing can be a great way to slow down, to savor, because it demands presence of mind and attention to detail.
Shawna Ayoub highlights the use of word-count containers to focus sometimes-painful stories in a collection of 131 essays under 300 words each.
Shawna Ayoub moves "beyond the book review" to dig into Jenn Givhan's use of footnotes in two poems from her latest book, Belly to the Brutal.