Charlotte Litmosphere

Welcome to Charlotte Lit’s literary arts blog. What you’ll find here: reviews, interviews, craft essays, previews of literary arts events, and anything else that catches our attention, updated most Mondays.

http://www.powells.com/post/readerly-terms/readerly-term-no-002-litmosphere
Paula Martinac

What’s a Sensitivity Reader…and Do I Need One?

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The fairly new term “sensitivity reader” might make warning bells go off for authors, who need to have artistic freedom and be free from fear of censorship. No fiction writer or memoirist wants to have their portrayal of characters from a different race, class, gender, or culture than their own stamped with a big “WRONG.” […]

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Helen Fowler

Writing for the Love of Discovery: On Research and Ekphrasis

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Editor’s Note: In this entry, Helen Fowler reflects on attending Charlotte Lit’s Poetry Workshopping feedback group with Danny Romine Powell last fall. Knowing I have to write to meet a deadline can send me on a frantic search for a good prompt, that holy grail that leads to something worth writing about. Before I signed […]

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Bryn Chancellor

Flash Fiction

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If a novel is a vast, tumultuous summer sky, and a short story a fast, feverish storm, then flash fiction is a cloud-splitting fork of lightning that electrifies the air. Flash stories (aka short-shorts, smoke-longs, or sudden, quick, nano, micro, or hint fiction—Yasunari Kawabata called them “palm-of-the-hand” stories) are tiny, contortionist shapeshifters that slip between […]

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Jaime Pollard-Smith

Lingering in the Language of the Soul

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In a couple of weeks, I will begin a new semester with a fresh group of unsuspecting students. After reviewing the syllabus, I will open the course by suggesting a shift in perspective and proposing a revision to their role as writers. Writing to think becomes our motto, and I explain that we rarely know […]

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