Between These Shores Books
Diving For Pearls
Online writers' resources by Ingrid Bruck
Ingrid Bruck is an editor at Between These Shores. She was a featured writer in BTSA Issue #2. Her column is devoted to online writer resources. She found her own writer support community online. Writing this column is one way of "paying it forward".
Diving for Pearls: Online Writers Resources
BTS Books strives to be a writers resource. Toward that end, we invite writers to share their information, link, and news of interest for the literary community.
Email your pearls of resources for writers to:
Ingrid Bruck, Network and Resource Editor
January 2022
Some Online Writer’s Resources for January 2022
The year’s end is a time to look back, assess and look forward.
When it comes to looking backward, authors and readers honor those the writing world has lost. This year Lawrence Ferlinghetti died—the last poet of the Beat Generation. And renowned Northwest poet, David Wagoner, whose poetry brings alive trees and birds of the Cascadia Region. And then there’s the educator, poet and translator, Robert Bly, whose work opens new poetry borders, he’s a poet whom I and others around the globe met through an online free MOOC by the University of Iowa Writer’s Group called “How Writers Write Poetry.”
For a list of writers lost, Poetry Foundation publishes an annual review. See the links below to obituaries of some major English language poets who died in 2021.
Friederike Mayröcker
Al Young
David Wagoner
Robert Bly
Thomas Kinsella
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
bell hooks
Etel Adnan
Adam Zagajewski
Janice Mirikitani
One of Poetry Foundation’s podcasts in the “Poets We Lost in 2021” series features the life, poetry, and activism of Janice Mirikitani, (Poetry Foundation, December 24, 2021):
Children’s author, Beverly Cleary, died at 104. She’s a literary great who died in 2021.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/26/books/beverly-cleary-dead.html
For more about Beverly Cleary and other losses, see: The Lives They Lived: Remembering some of the artists, innovators and thinkers we lost in the last year.
NYT Magazine, Dec. 2021. creativewritersopps.blogspot.com
The best books and award lists of the year are announced in December.
For recommendations to the overall literary marketplace in 2021, I recommend:
2021 NPR books: Books We Love. It’s an extensive subject list of great reads, every year, thoughtfully curated by NPR. 2,800 books published in 2021 on lists by subject (EX: Sci-Fi, Dark Side, History, Music, art, etc.) https://apps.npr.org/best-books/#view=covers&year=2021
For select lists by genre/subject, go to: Lit Hub’s THE BEST REVIEWED BOOKS OF 2021 https://bookmarks.reviews/category/best-of-2021/
As to looking forward, I heartily recommend ModPo (Modern American Poetry) for free online classes. SloPo 2022 has five ModPo mini-courses now open for enrollment for the ModPo off-season (the first months of 2022). As with all ModPo offerings, these are free (no charge whatsoever) and open to anyone. You only need to be already enrolled in ModPo. If you are not currently enrolled, click HERE to do so.
GROUP 1 — January 21-31, led by Al Filreis: “Selected works of Caroline Bergvall”
GROUP 2 — February 15-25, led by Jake Marmer: “Poetry of Border Crossings”
GROUP 3 — March 15-25, led by Jason Zuzga: “The Poetry of Jack Spicer”
GROUP 4 — April 15-May 2, led by Mandana Chaffa: “Contemporary 21st Century Poetry: A Consideration of Poets and Poems from the New Millenium”
GROUP 5 — May 15-25, led by Kate Colby: “The Poetry of George Oppen”
In parting, I pass on a year-end selection of educational videos about the craft of writing, produced by Bestselling Authors, Editors, and Agents of The Writer’s Workshop at Authors Publish: Free Gift: 13 Lectures for Writers.
https://authorspublish.thinkific.com/courses/lecture-series
Best wishes to you in 2022 as you further your education as a writer and reader.
