Publishing books is a big step, but it feels like the right directions for TWJ. We will continue to produce quarterly literary magazines, hold workshops and events, but now we have one more opportunity to offer our growing community of storytellers. And more books by more writers in the western PA Wilds is right in line with our mission to elevate and empower regional authorship.
Even in the digital age, books still make the best gift. They are thoughtful, personalized and wonderful keepsakes. If you’re looking for a last minute gift for someone in your life, check out these books by local authors, which are in no particular order.
Local Literary Event Series: Author David Taylor Historian and Writers Block Group participant David Taylor completed a 280-page book entitled The Way We Were: Brookville, Pennsylvania through the Camera’s Lens.…
Last month, Brockway writer, PJ Piccirillo came to the Rebecca M. Arthur’s Library in Brookville to talk about his latest book, The Indigo Scarf, which was recently published with Sunbury…
Now here we are again, planning for another full year of extremely local literary excitement. So much has changed and grown since we began. What has not changed is our passion for regional voices. We will continue to publish quarterly in 2020, as well as provide our quarterly Workshops and other events. However, we have a mind for growth and are working on some very exciting opportunities and literary initiatives in the next year.
There is a golden moment in writer’s meetings that I both dread and relish, every time. It’s that few seconds after you have finished reading your work, just before you look up from the page. You are filled with elation. What was conceived as an idea and hatched in a battle of words has now discovered flight. Your story is your secret no longer; it has left the nest and taken on a life of its own.
The 72 page account of Gourley’s experiences as an air balloon pilot is divided into a series of stories that are written conversationally, like stories you would tell to your friends, sitting around the living room or at an evening campfire.
Each time someone says, “Oh yeah” to a poem something good – in a much broader sense than morality – is birthed. We have seen through the eyes of another and that makes our vision clearer.
As Gioia asks, how did Kool Herc, the father of hip-hop, change the very nature of poetry without an English degree? There is only one conclusion, he asserts: today’s poets do not need a degree. They write while they work as baristas, bookstore clerks, or in law, medicine, and business. Social media is the great equalizer: an online journal requires virtually nothing but someone’s time. Gioia exults that this new Bohemia of poets, existing outside the academic economy, is a vigorous alternative culture. “They have diversified, democratized and localized American poetry,” he crows.
There’s a difference between young writers who are trying to “find their voice” and faking the voice. “The Voice” is the person the reader hears telling the story or reading the poem. So whereas you may indeed be able to sound like Anne Rice or Tom Clancy for a few amazing paragraphs, no matter how hard you try the real you will come through. And both the reader and you will hit a wall like an egg-splat when that happens. The reader will say something like, hey, wait just a minute . . . you’re no Stephen King or whomever you are trying to sound like. That loss of trust is catastrophic.