Common Threads: Reading Lists

by Kate Finegan & Stephanie Trott

In this workshop, we’ll be digging into your existing work to find the common threads that could be woven into a collection. Before our first meeting, please select one of the following reading lists and take notes on the common threads that you find in the pieces. Consider what holds each collection together and how the writer varies these commonalities to create echoes, but not redundancy. Each reading list also includes interviews with the author so that you can see how they went about crafting their collection. You can discuss your insights in the workshop forum. Note: You are not required to buy the full collection for this workshop (although all of these would brighten your bookshelves).

Tyrese Coleman – How to Sit (CNF)

• Follow Tyrese on Twitter
• Buy How to Sit e-book from Mason Jar Press (hard copies backordered)
• Essays:
  • How to Sit (in PANK)
  • Why I Let Him Touch My Hair (in Brevity)
  • Thoughts on My Ancestry.com DNA Results (at The Rumpus)
  • An Excerpt from How to Mourn (in Kenyon Review)
  • A Nameless Mound (in Redux)
• Interviews:
  • Who Says Memoir Has to Be Nonfiction?, The Millions, May 2019
  • The Spaces Beyond the Facts, The Rumpus, June 2019

Sabrina Orah Mark – Wild Milk (flash fiction/prose poetry)

• Follow Sabrina on Twitter
• Buy Wild Milk from the Dorothy Project
• Pieces:
  • Wild Milk (in Tin House)
  • I Did Not Eat the Child (in A Strange Object)
  • The Stepmother (in Poetry Daily)
  • The Maid, the Mother, the Snail, and I (in Catapult)
  • The Very Nervous Family (at Poets.org)
• Interviews:
  • Interview with the Ellen Boyette, Iowa Review, May 2019
  • Interview: In Conversation with Vi Khi Nao, Bennington Review

Ashleigh Bryant Phillips – Sleepovers (short stories)

• Follow Ashleigh on Twitter
• Purchase SLEEPOVERS from Hub City Press via Bookshop.org
• Stories:
  • The Truth About Miss Katie (in The Tusk)
  • The Virgin (in Oxford American)
  • Sleepovers (in Hobart)
  • Shania (in The Nervous Breakdown)
    • Ashleigh Bryant Phillips reads “Shania” (Youtube; April 2020)
• Interviews:
  • Magical Connection to the Land: A Conversation with Ashleigh Bryant Phillips, Southwest Review, June 2020
  • Ashleigh Bryant Phillips on “Losing Our Real True South” to Capitalism, Southern Review of Books, June 2020

Todd Dillard – Ways We Vanish (poems)

• Follow Todd on Twitter
• Purchase WAYS WE VANISH from Okay Donkey Press
• Poems:
  • “Abstract” (in Booth)
  • “In the Dream Where My Father Doesn’t Have Cancer He Makes Origami Animals” (in Glass)
  • “Interview with an Addict’s Son” (in The Boiler)
  • “Cryptophasia” and “The Engineer” (from Longleaf Review)
  • “My Father’s Feet” and “Prodigal” (from Sundog Lit)
• Interviews:
  • Ways We Vanish: A Conversation with Todd Dillard, Longleaf Review, March 2020
  • Poet in the Mirror: Todd Dillard, Frontier Poetry, August 2020