The end of the decade is here! As we move in to the ’20s, we’re looking back on this past year to celebrate some truly great books. End 2019 with a bang (or start 2020 fresh!) with these 19 fiction…
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Hugo House’s Best-Loved Books of 2019
Posted Tue, 12/10/2019 - 9:30am by Katie Prince | Category: Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, Hugo Classes, Literature
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How To Write Several Poems in the Course of an Afternoon by Kelli Russell Agodon
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There is this belief that we can sit down at a laptop or open our notebooks and write a poem. While some can do that, there are many who, when they sit down and see the blank screen, follow that…
“You Have to Let Your Obsessions Guide You”: An Exclusive Q&A with Tom Perrotta
Posted Mon, 11/04/2019 - 9:52am by Megan Gallagher | Category: Events, Fiction, Word Works, Writing Advice
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Tom Perrotta is the author of nine works of fiction, including Election and Little Children, both of which were made into Oscar-nominated films, and The Leftovers, which was adapted into a critically acclaimed, Peabody Award-winning HBO series. His other books include Bad Haircut, The Wishbones, Joe College, The…
Three Strategies for Reclaiming Your Writing Time by Liza Birnbaum
Posted Tue, 10/29/2019 - 9:35am by Guest Contributor | Category: Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, Hugo Classes, Poetry, Writing, Writing Advice
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At the top of every slippery slope is a spot that feels like solid, level ground. For me, the top of one such slope came around mid-May of this year. After holding out for over 10 years, I’d gotten a…
Writing Architecture through Fiction by Ayad Rahmani
Posted Tue, 10/22/2019 - 8:46am by Guest Contributor | Category: Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, Hugo Classes, Writing, Writing Advice
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The objective of this workshop is to practice architectural criticism through the lens of insight. Where most architectural criticism is evaluatory, leveling judgment on a given project, this form of feedback is not. It assumes that the world is complex…
“There Is Only the Joy of Hard Work”: An Exclusive Q&A with Chris Abani
Posted Mon, 10/14/2019 - 12:30pm by Katie Prince | Category: Events, Hugo Classes, Word Works, Writing
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Chris Abani is a novelist, poet, essayist, screenwriter, and playwright. Born in Nigeria to an Igbo father and English mother, he grew up in Afikpo, Nigeria, and published his first book at age 16. Jailed three times and sentenced to death…
Widening the Scope of Your Personal Essay by Santi Elijah Holley
Posted Fri, 10/11/2019 - 12:01pm by Guest Contributor | Category: Creative Nonfiction, Hugo Classes, Writing, Writing Advice
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Personal essays can do many things. They can help us navigate our experiences, our grief, our trauma, or our joy. They can help show others how to navigate these for themselves. And they can unite us—author and reader—in a shared,…
Looking at Ledes (in Critical Writing) by Kevin O’Rourke
Posted Thu, 10/10/2019 - 9:50am by Guest Contributor | Category: Creative Nonfiction, Hugo Classes, Writing, Writing Advice
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Openings are important in any piece of writing, but they’ve always struck me as particularly important to critical writing. Why? Well, because critical writing bears the burden of always being about something else, often something readers have heard of and…
What I am Trying to Say: A Micro Lesson in Revising for Truth by CMarie Fuhrman
Posted Wed, 10/09/2019 - 9:45am by Guest Contributor | Category: Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, Hugo Classes, Poetry, Writing, Writing Advice
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It was an essay about climate change. At least that is what I wanted the essay to be about. I wrote passionately about finding trash on the trail, the bear hunter who passed us on the road, a meadow in…
Using Sound: An Exercise by Corinne Manning
Posted Fri, 10/04/2019 - 9:10am by Guest Contributor | Category: Fiction, Hugo Classes, Writing, Writing Advice
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In a workshop, the writer Dorothy Allison had us go around the room and all fake an orgasm. She critiqued the authenticity and then had us write a sex scene where sound was present. This idea came up when she…
4 Tips for Writing Good Dialogue by Ana Pastor
Posted Tue, 10/01/2019 - 9:01am by Guest Contributor | Category: Fiction, Hugo Classes, Writing, Writing Advice
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Writing for the stage offered me an opportunity to explore the mechanics of dialogue. In a play, the spoken word carries a weight that in other genres it shares with written descriptions, insights into situations, references… On stage the word…
Seven Signs You Should Write a Novella by Jesse Edward Johnson
Posted Mon, 9/30/2019 - 9:41am by Guest Contributor | Category: Fiction, Hugo Classes, Writing, Writing Advice
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Do you write fiction? Maybe you’ve got a shoebox full of short stories, or the drafts of various novels. Maybe you haven’t yet found the right form in which to realize the full potential of your story. Maybe you’re wondering…
How to Find Story Ideas when You’re Feeling Uninspired by Alma García
Posted Fri, 9/27/2019 - 9:45am by Guest Contributor | Category: Fiction, Hugo Classes, Writing, Writing Advice
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Creativity is a slippery thing. There’s nothing so thrilling as being in the flow of the creative zone…until the day your inspiration is gone. Then it’s like you’ve been dumped on the side of the highway. You’re lost, tired, stuck,…
Three Steps for Selling Your Next Book by Rachel Werner
Posted Mon, 9/23/2019 - 9:33am by Guest Contributor | Category: Hugo Classes, Publishing, Writing, Writing Advice
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How do you want the reader to be changed by the words you’ve written? We all know too well that what motivates one person to keep turning pages could equally trigger another to shut a book forever. Which is why…
Motherhood is Not a Niche Topic: Writing Mother and Child with Anne Liu Kellor
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As a mother, I know how hard it is to find time to write. In the early years, it was all I could manage to scribble out a short journal entry in a 10-minute burst while someone else held the…