GrubStreet Instructor, marketing consultant, writer, and mother of two, Allison Pottern Hoch knows how important support can be to fostering a creative life. She’ll be covering this topic and more in her class Writing Like a Parent, Parenting Like a Writer on July 20th, but until then read on to learn more about grants, scholarships, residencies and more for writers who are parents.

Last month at DeadDarlings, we were lucky enough to speak to two authors about their debut works. Ladee Hubbard told us about what led to The Talented Ribkins (Melville House, 2017) and Arif Anwar shared how he wrote The Storm, (HarperCollins/Simon & Schuster May 2018).

Ladee: What did it take to get The Talented Ribkins sold and onto the bookshelves?

Jamel Brinkley's debut collection, A Lucky Man, has garnered great praise from all corners of the literary community. According to Publishers Weekly, “the nine stories in Brinkley’s promising debut address persistent issues of race, class, and masculinity across three decades of New York City’s history.”

In late November, members and friends of the GrubStreet Writers of Color Group met with editors from local literary journals and magazines to talk about the publishing process, the concerns facing writers of color when they submit to magazines, and what journals can do to improve representation of writers of color. Group member and GrubStreet instructor Daphne Strassmann gives us the key points of the discussion, including what both writers and editors can do differently when it comes to submissions.

Writers wrestle many demons of insecurity when it comes to submitting work for publication. For some authors, like myself, self-doubt ...

By Katrin Schumann

I write a lot about writers’ insecurities because for 99.9 percent of us, fear lurks behind the brave faces we put on. Depending on where we are in our careers, we may all be afraid of different types of failures, but these deep-seated anxieties rarely go away completely.

Most artists learn to live with fear—and some learn to use it to drive toward better work. I might even dare to say that if you don’t experience doubt or fear, you should be worried. Overconfidence usually doesn’t serve writers well.