book review

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.

The clear takeaway, the living arc of this book, is how a love of poetry and a commitment to a writing life, or any artistic life, can bind two people to one another.

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.

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.