Connie Perry is an artist, comic performer, publicist, and writer. She joined the late Sue Ribner's Cancer Writing Workshop at Roosevelt Hospital in early 2014, just after her cancer treatment, her "hysterical-ectomy." She is currently a participant in Emily Rubin's Write Treatment workshops at the hospital, where there are exciting plans to publish an anthology. As a freelance book publicist, Perry connects authors to media. As a theater usher, she diffuses customer service stress by performing her one-woman show, "Theatre Obsession: Saucy Tales From the Aisle." She will be performing in the ONE Festival in New York City, April 27 and 30. Her visual arts project, utilizing DeaR postcards as seen in Summer Streets 2015 and the Garment District Arts Festival, will connect with comedy variety shows until the presidential election in 2016. Visit @DeaRcards on Instagram for more information.

As a participant in Emily Rubin's Write Treatment workshops for people dealing with and surviving cancer, funded through the Readings & Workshops program at Poets & Writers, we writers gather close around the table, buoyed by our continuing bravery. Not because we have each had cancer battles, but because we face blank pages. There is courage in our pens, our prose spilling onto our notebook paper. We face our pain, our past, and our present with soon-to-be scrawled imagination.

The time to be heroes is now, when the prompt has been given and the scratch of pens unites. We hum along, intent, concentrating, as the air duct hums above us. We are silent, reaching towards the perfect word or any word that describes or harnesses the beast. Oh rise up to us, dear muse, gather us towards a salvation. Give us this half hour of life, dripping and dropping or drowning upon the page.

Real or imagined, our lives are entwined within the hallowed pools of spilled ink, shards of dreams, and delights wanting to be read aloud. The words carry us along the timeless highway of connection. Do we all hover over our process or do we sail full-bodied towards a new happening, a new pronunciation, or a new verb? A new definition of closeness comes forth from our writing. We are humbled or overjoyed by word choice; one that comes in a flash yet has a very deep hidden meaning from some vivid past experience.

How do we know how to spell so precisely as letters form under our might? Cosmic rays of intelligence streak across the margins, coloring our lives with magic, hope, and truth. Do we dare to be so bold and blunt, to wildly run to the edge of sanity? Of course, we need this catharsis of earned sentences. We need this healing of combined stories. Or, we just need to make shit up.

Oh bold prince of black ink, earn your way across this boundary of paper. Churn and turn out endless drafts of optimism or cheeky promise. Do not let me down by running out of things to say. This writers group gropes forward to acknowledge the awe and to continue a dialogue with the universe.

Time seems to stand still as penmanship erodes to blurs and barely formed missives. Then, time speeds up as breath is baited and imaginations fired by plucking from dreams or sentimental wanderings. Be still our hearts as we transfer life forces to blue-lined commitment.

The planets lend their full support; the gods look down upon the labor with admiration, as long-held truths are laid bare. Simple connections between humans are being honored and trusted amid the pushing forward of language.

We feel exhaustion, emotion, exhalation, yet all so exquisite. The senses are full, alive, and driving towards one final statement.

My writing friends, my heroes surround me, excited by the closeness and the exertion, all of us gliding towards a complete piece. Tranquility sets in as the closure sentence rounds out. And for a brave finale, we shall read aloud our work. 

Photo: Connie Perry.  Photo credit: Connie Perry.

Support for Reading & Workshops in New York City is provided, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, with additional support form the Louis & Anne Abrons Foundation, the Axe-Houghton Foundation, the A.K. Starr Charitable Trust, and the Friends of Poets & Writers.

In an essay published in the New Yorker in 2011, Jhumpa Lahiri wrote, "Being a writer means taking the leap from listening to saying, 'Listen to me.'" Jot down a list of several personal beliefs, contemporary topics, or ideas that you feel an especially strong need to express volubly—from the personal to the political, the spectacular to the mundane, the all-encompassing to the minute. Write a personal essay about one of these issues, reflecting on how you arrived at your opinions by first discussing the idea with other people and listening to what they had to say, and then making your own, more specific conclusions. Provide anecdotes from conversations, events, situations, or words you have read or overheard. Make sure that your unique personality and voice are showcased in what you've decided is worthy of being shouted from the rooftops.

Toward the end of last year, French publisher Short Édition unveiled short story vending machines in eight public places around the city of Grenoble in southeastern France. Users can choose either one, three, or five minutes' worth of fiction to read—ideal for waiting or commuting—and one of six hundred community-submitted stories is dispensed for free from the cylindrical orange vending machine on receiptlike paper. Try your hand at writing a short story that can be read in one minute; then write a three-minute story; and finally a five-minute story. How does manipulating diction, tone, and style make sense for different story lengths? Explore the use of dialogue and a limited number of characters necessary to accommodate the restricted length.

Visual artists who have been productive over long stretches of time often develop certain periods of work with shared characteristics, such as similar color palettes. For example, Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse both had dark periods, Pablo Picasso had his blue and rose periods, and Victor Vasarely had a black-and-white period. As we begin to think about the year's transition from winter to spring, bringing along with it seasonal changes in light and sound, consider embarking on a new period of your own work. Write a series of short poems inspired by your observations of the different colors, moods, and scenery around you that signal the forthcoming spring season. To begin a green period, for example, what might be your key points of inspiration, in terms of imagery and vocabulary?

At a ceremony Wednesday night in New York City, Adam Johnson was named the  winner of the 2016 Story Prize for his collection Fortune Smiles (Random House). The $20,000 award is given annually for a short story collection published during the previous year.

The two runners-up for the prize were Charles Baxter for There’s Something I Want You to Do (Pantheon) and Colum McCann for Thirteen Ways of Looking (Random House). Each finalist received $5,000. The Story Prize Spotlight Award—an additional prize of $1,000, given for a collection of exceptional merit—went to Adrian Tomine for his collection of graphic short stories, Killing and Dying (Drawn & Quarterly). During Wednesday night’s event, all three finalists read from and discussed their work on stage with prize director Larry Dark.

Last November Fortune Smiles took home the National Book Award, which makes Johnson the first author to win the Story Prize and the National Book Award for the same title. He is also now the first author to have won the Story Prize, the National Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize, which he received in 2013 for his novel The Orphan Master’s Son. Johnson is also the author of the story collection Emporium and the novel Parasites Like Us. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a California Book Award, among other accolades. He lives in San Francisco and teaches creative writing at Stanford University.

Dark and Story Prize founder Julie Lindsey selected the three finalists from among a hundred books submitted in 2015, from sixty-four different publishers. A panel of three judges selected the winner: author and previous Story Prize–winner Anthony Doerr; Rita Meade, a librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library; and New Yorker staff writer Kathryn Schulz.

“Fortune Smiles is an electrically imaginative story collection that’s wrestling very hard with the world we’re living in right now,” the judges said. “Johnson writes like Rembrandt painted, richly and specifically, with an inclination toward self-portrait and a gift for making it seem like a whole world carries on not only within but beyond each of these small canvasses.”

Established in 2004 to honor collections of short fiction and to attract more attention to the form, the Story Prize boasts the largest first-prize amount of any fiction award in the United States. Previous winners include Elizabeth McCracken, George Saunders, Claire Vaye Watkins, and Steven Millhauser.

Photo credit: Beowulf Sheehan

“A Book Sanctuary in the Rockies” by Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine details the project of Jeff Lee and Ann Martin to create a network of three residential libraries, which will be home to tens of thousands of books and will host writers- and artists-in-residence. The libraries will be located in the Rocky Mountain region in and around Denver, Colorado with many of the books, projects, and community partners focused on land, environment, and the West. Write an essay about what your vision of a residential library would be if you were to create one. What might your theme or focus be, and your inspiration? What rural, urban, or suburban space would you want to offer to writers-in-residence at your library?

The Academy Awards, National Book Awards, James Beard Awards, Grammy Awards, Nobel Prizes, and Super Bowl MVP Awards all recognize and celebrate the achievements of their recipients annually with great fanfare. Write a short story that begins with the main character winning a major award. Describe the award, real or imagined, and whether there is an accompanying prize in addition to the honor and acclaim. Does your character prove to be camera-shy or fame-hungry? Does the award ultimately change her circumstances for better or for worse? Are there surprising consequences?

The recipients of the 2016 Windham Campbell Prizes for Literature have been announced. Administered by Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, the annual awards are given to English-language writers of fiction, nonfiction, and drama for outstanding literary achievement or great potential. Each writer receives $150,000.

The winners in fiction are Tessa Hadley (U.K.), C. E. Morgan (U.S.), and Jerry Pinto (India); the winners in nonfiction are Hilton Als (U.S.), Stanley Crouch (U.S.), and Helen Garner (Australia); and the winners in drama are Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (U.S.), Hannah Moscovitch (Canada), and Abbie Spallen (Ireland).

The Windham Campbell Prizes were established in 2013 by Donald Windham and Sandy M. Campbell to “call attention to literary achievement and provide writers with the opportunity to focus on their work independent of financial concerns.” The prizes are open to writers from anywhere in the world at all stages of their careers. There is no application process for the prize; the awards are made by a group of nominators, a three-member jury in each category, and a nine-member selection committee. Past winners have included Teju Cole, Geoff Dyer, John Jeremiah Sullivan, James Salter, and Naomi Wallace. The 2017 prizes will expand to include a poetry category.

The winners will receive their prizes during an international literary festival at Yale in September celebrating their work. All festival events are free and open to the public. For more information about the prizes and the 2016 winners, visit the Windham Campbell Prizes website.

Below, watch 2016 nonfiction winner Hilton Als deliver the keynote lecture at last year's Windham Campbell Prizes Festival.

Hilton Als' 2015 Windham-Campbell Lecture from Windham Campbell Prizes on Vimeo.

Photos: C. E. Morgan, Stanley Crouch, Hilton Als.