Charlotte Lit’s Blog

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.

Paul Reali

Pen to Paper Prompt: Choice

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Election day is a good day to think about choice. Writing is all choice. The writer chooses, over and over again, from the vast catalog of everything. Some of the choices a writer makes include: • Who’s telling the story: narrator or narrators • Who else is in the story: supporting character or characters • Who are […]

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David Radavich

The Intimate Kinship of Genres

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During this period of hyper-consciousness about genres and subgenres, bookstores, Amazon, and agents encourage us to think of “boxes” into which our writing can be put for purposes of marketing. Not surprisingly, we pay close attention to relatively small distinctions between intersecting forms of literature. What makes for a young adult novel—a teenage protagonist?  How do […]

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Melinda Ferguson

Collecting Family Stories

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As I’ve been writing in my journal these past thirty-some years, I’ve often found myself associating events of the day with memories of my childhood, or referencing family stories I often heard growing up. Some of the stories are about me before I was old enough to remember them; others tell a story of  “the time […]

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John Amen

A Few Thoughts on Writing Reviews

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Discussing the dynamics, structures, and techniques inherent to the artistic process heightens one’s ability to connect with work beyond “liking” and “disliking.” If you “like” something, why? What about the artist’s craft made that possible? Reviews can offer a rating, if the publication demands that (it’s a way to hook readers with bottom-line info), but […]

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