Creative writers everywhere value uninterrupted time to write in an inspiring place and 329 of them in 7 genres from across the US, Canada and 5 other countries applied to our new Writers in Residence program—a collaboration between Straw Dog Writers Guild and Edith Wharton’s The Mount in Lenox, MA. As volunteer organizers, we were Read More
Bela Breslau and Stephen Billias are the co authors of the forthcoming novel Pilgrim Maya, which they plan to release next summer. Stephen’s most recent book is A Book of Fields: Tales from the Pioneer Valley, a short story collection which they published in 2019. Stephen has also written seven novels of science fiction and fantasy, including The Read More
Suzanne Rancourt is a poet, a writer of fiction and creative non-fiction, photographer, and musical artist. As a woman of Native American and European ancestry who grew up in rural Maine, and as a Marine Corps and Army veteran, she has combined her heritage, her arts, and her experiences as a survivor into a therapeutic Read More
Boricua poet and feminist intersectional educator María Luisa Arroyo’s poetry collections include Gathering Words: Recogiendo Palabras (Bilingual Press 2008), and the chapbooks Flight (2016) and Destierro Means More than Exile (2018). Her poems and essays have been published in a number of journals and magazines, and among her many awards, she was named Springfield’s Inaugural Read More
Lanette Sweeney’s first poetry collection, What I Should Have Said: A Poetry Memoir about Losing A Child to Addiction, has just been released by Finishing Line Press. The book is structured in accordance with the stages of grief, and includes twenty poems by Sweeney’s late son, who died of an overdose in 2016. Sweeney began Read More
Richard Wayne Horton is the author of Sticks and Bones (Meat for Tea Press, 2017), and Artists In The Underworld (Human Error Publishing, 2019). Later this year he will release Ballet for Murderers (Human Error Publishing). Richard writes poetry, flash fiction, and longer fiction, but much of his work is a hybrid of these genres, Read More
by Tzivia Gover This spring, I drove through three states and rode a ferry to visit my father, stepmom, and brother for the first time in what feels like forever. Here in the northeastern US, this is the current pandemic trend. Thanks to vaccinations and dropping rates of infection, many of us were finally able Read More
VOICES FOR RESISTANCE PROGRAM TO FEATURE SIX REGIONAL WRITERS WHO TACKLE ISSUES OF SOCIAL JUSTICE Six regional writers will be featured at the Voices for Resistance May 19 event. Sponsored by the Straw Dog Writers Guild and Forbes Library, the readings will begin at 7 p.m. The event is online and open to the public Read More
by Stephanie Shafran Did you know each of us has an “A” story and a “B” story to our lives? I first heard about this concept at a featured reading by Ann Averill, a talented local author who recently published her memoir “Teacher Dropout: Finding Grace in an Unjust School”. Summarizing these main ideas from Read More
By Jacqueline Sheehan I never intended to include a dog in my 2007 novel, Lost & Found, but once a barrel-chested black lab showed up in the story line, there was no going back. He had a big personality and kept muscling his way into each scene. And I am so glad that he did. Read More
