If you're not writing about love, you're not writing.
-Peter Markus

Yes, poet Matthew Olzmann writes about love in his recent debut Mezzanines, winner of the 2011 Kundiman Poetry Prize. But he also writes about fear, cruelty, Spock and Mountain Dew. The thing is, when...

I have hidden a world in my small heart,
A world full of love and feelings,
With hidden desires and wishes,
Wishes that make me write.

From Hila's "Small Heart":

Don't write about love. As a young writer here in America, I heard this message...

In Miah Arnold's engaging and enjoyable first novel Sweet Land of Bigamy, protagonist Helen cannot stop her husband from going to Iraq to chase big money as a contractor. Soon after he leaves, Helen falls in crazy-making love with an Indian poet. When the poet's mother falls so...

A father's love. Some of us are blessed to be nurtured by our fathers from birth. Some of us find this love later in life, from fathers, or from father figures. Some of us spend a lifetime chasing after this mysterious force. Some of us will never know what it's...

Don't expect victims. This is not to say that writers in the Afghan Women's Writing Project have never been abused by the men in their lives. But if you read their words, you will never imagine these writers as passive objects of male cruelty. You will envision women...

The power of a staged story, of a secret acted out before our eyes...as a kid, I was never one to say "let's put on a play," but as a young adult, I was seared deeply by the 1997 Lyttleton Theatre production of Harold Pinter's The Homecoming. I suddenly knew...

"The problem with midwesterners is that you have no culture."

In 2006, a young male New Yorker said this to Lacy M. Johnson, author of the stunning and thoughtful memoir Trespasses (Iowa) in which she tells the stories of three generations of family making their way...

When I heard that Harlem's Hue-Man Bookstore would be closing its shop and selling books only online and at selected events, I sank into a low-grade depression. Yes, I'm guilty these days of buying most of my books online, but there is nothing like a bookshop, nothing like...

The burqa is a blue stop sign. We're told that it exists to stop the gaze of a strange male from landing on a woman's skin. But sometimes, it stops us others, us women and men who want to know these women, stops us from recognizing their strength, their individuality,...

"Me. We." There it is in the Studio Museum atrium, the Muhammad Ali poem on demand as conceived by Glenn Ligon, his Me on top of We. This is Glenn Ligon, so this is also a light show. First, the Me is lit. Then the We. Then the Me. The...

If anniversaries of terrible occasions are good for anything, they help us focus on not just the event in question, but its long aftermath. I continue to work with John Mutter, a Columbia University professor who studies the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The deep question has always been:...

Strong words. Decisive action. A promise of "unwavering support" followed up directly by the might of the United States government. In an emergency, for us and for our neighbors, this is how we hope our government will respond. On Day 4 of the Haitian earthquake catastrophe, this is how the...

Governing is a grind. Look no further than health care reform to know that what soared as rhetoric can look like confetti on the floor once the House and Senate get a hold of it. Easy for the cynic to believe that it doesn't matter who sits in the White...

Don't look back. Like some video star who walks away from explosions with nary a glance over her shoulder, my mother taught me that this was the way to deal with the traumas of life. She survived her youth with men who drowned their suffering in alcohol by moving forward,...

The New Orleans Police Department chaplain knows suffering. Joe Cull spends his days, and many nights, on the porches and in the parlors of neighbors' homes as he listens to those who have experienced fresh trauma. He did so before and after Katrina. He does so today.

But observers...

Republicans aren't the only ones who push aside the Geneva conventions for political expediency. Democrats did so for the last two years, opting to wait out the Bush administration before engaging them on their crimes against humanity.

I held my breath, hoping that this bargain would be short-lived. Once...

I hear a storyline hardening around Eric Holder's nomination. Instead of being celebrated for the accomplished and outstanding public servant that he is, Holder is being portrayed as more of the same Clinton-era politics that Obama was supposed to leave behind.

I disagree that Holder's nomination is just "more...

The glass. Did you see it? I'm referring to those two sheets that President-elect Barack Obama stood between as he spoke to us from Grant Park. Glass sheets so clear as to almost be unnoticeable, yet thick enough to protect the man in the event that someone in that crowd...

"I must steel myself for disappointment," says one friend. "I'm weighing Toronto vs Montreal," says another. "If McCain wins, Americans get what they deserve," adds one more.

Usually I would sympathize with such attempts at self-preservation. Many of us are emotionally invested in Tuesday's election in a way that's beyond...

"I've got an idea," said my friend Larry, "why don't you come down and ride out Gustav with me? Don't you want to experience a hurricane firsthand?" These plaintive questions were on my voicemail. I listened as I walked uphill on 145th in Harlem, laughing the entire length of the...