Blog Posts by Subject: Creative writing

Joan Didion's stately prose, with its dry humor and turns toward observation, has enamored readers for the last five decades. A writer of fiction, nonfiction, and screenplays, she has taught us how to depart a once-loved city, critique "the process" of democracy, and of course, enjoy the pleasures of an elegant sentence.

Snowed out and what's a teacher to do?! You know the old adage about "You only have one chance to make a first impression." Somehow, just canceling class did not seem ideal. We improvised!

Whether you're looking to ease into creative writing, think about literature in greater depth, or simply discover what it is writers think about writing, these books offer the pleasure of writers thinking about and doing what they do best.

Writing can be a daunting task. You sit in front of a blank page. You try to make something where there was nothing, and your only material is language. Yet over the years, NYPL has spoken to dozens of writers who have faced exactly this challenge and ended up on the other side of a finished book. If you want to write, then get ready to take notes.

As we know Summer is almost over, but for the Writer's Club@Columbus things just seem to be warming up. Topical and tropical but cooled by the air conditioning, we restarted on August 18th with the idea of not shying away from the good, controversial or the truth and we hope to keep things going for the rest of the year.

Our last week of Imagination Academy 2014 focused on illustration and graphic novels.

For Week 3 of Imagination Academy, we shifted our focus to poetry. The week kicked off with Jane LeCroy, a New York based poet, singer, teacher and performance artist. According to Jane, poetry is ”Something that takes a while to understand. Once you first read it through, you can’t at first decipher what the author is trying to say. But that’s what makes poetry so much fun. There are no rules.”

Week 2 (Fiction II) of Imagination Academy started with a bang! pop! POW! on Tuesday, July 15.

It's International Zine Month (July 21 is Zine Library Day!) and they are everywhere...

On Tuesday, July 8, the 67th Street Library kicked off its third annual Imagination Academy. This special writing workshop brings 12 different published authors to the branch over 4 weeks to work with kids ages 8-13. Children’s Librarian Jacqueline Schector, along with interns Amber and Nicole, began this summer with a week dedicated to writing fiction.

Using Colum McCann’s descriptive approach as a model, we thought of war and writing and tried to inject ourselves into the scene.

Last week it was thrilling to have two of the club’s guardian angels working with us. A special thanks to Lois Stavsky, who organized and created our workshop lesson and to Young Adult author Lyn Miller-Lachmann, the lego lady (her latest book Rogue) and resident of the Columbus Branch neighborhood, who dropped in, hung out, participated and inspired us all. The Writers' Club@Columbus examined the issue of homelessness, a daunting problem afflicting our city and world.

Recently I had occasion to spend a lot of time in the Mystery section on the second floor at the Mid-Manhattan Library. After looking at many, many titles there, I noticed a plethora of puns.

After a short break, Imagination Academy came together once more at the 67th Street branch for its final session of the summer. This week's focus was fiction and we had a great slate of local authors visiting and sharing their writing tips and tricks to spur the tweens on with their writing. From dancing giants to sneaky spies, the kids explored fiction that was realistic as well as magical and enjoyed it all.

Betsy Bird reading with groupThe week began with Betsy Bird, NYPL's Youth Materials 

Kids embrace celebrated author Rita Williams-GarciaWe just kicked off the 2nd year of the 67th Street Library's creative writing summer program for tweens: the Imagination Academy. This past week the focus was on historical fiction and a fantastic group of local authors came to share their insights with the kids. After a presentation by the author, which anyone is welcome to attend, the kids got to spend the rest of the afternoon crafting their own stories under the tutelage of these experienced and celebrated writers.

On Tuesday, 

DISCLAIMER: This blog post is intended for mature readers onlyRecognize the icon above? Perhaps you may not realize this but Playboy the publication, historically speaking, has been a leading magazine devoted to freedom of expression and human rights (to a certain extent). Founded in 1953 in Chicago by Hugh Hefner, Playboy has often been perceived as a "taboo" 

LIVE from the NYPL welcomes all National Novel Writing Month participants to come to The New York Public Library on Tuesday, November 20th for a Write-In. Spend a few minutes or hours writing in the Edna Barnes Salomon room to brainstorm, ponder, and work on your NaNoWriMo challenge.

What better place to write than this home to thousands of stories? LIVE would like to help you add your story to our collection.

The fourth and final week of the 67th Street Library's Dream Big Imagination Academy has ended with a bang and several short stories! Each day from Tuesday through Friday these promising young writers met at the library from 1-4 p.m. as part of this free writer's workshop for 9-12 year olds. And with the support and guidance of several local authors, these up and coming talents realized their dreams as we spent the week celebrating fiction!

Tuesday began with local author