Blog Posts by Subject: Creative writing

Recognize 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" magazine based on its adult content. You may not realize this but many famous writers have contributed their works to the magazine over the past five decades. The magazine does not only contain photographs but also essays illustrating a segment of American social history.

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.

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!

Memoirs are the stuff of memory, or more specifically, according to Webster's Dictionary, a narrative composed from personal experience. In other words, a memoir is written from a person's recollection of a life experience. It might not all be exactly as it happened but, rather, how the author perceived it to happen. Do you remember the controversial “autobiography" A Million Little Pieces by James Frey? Mr. Frey presented it as an autobiography which is a factual account of a person's own life. It was later determined after lawsuits and an embarrassed Oprah Winfrey, who highlighted his work on her show, that in fact this book was a partly fictionalized memoir. 

In connection with the organization Lifetime Arts, NYPL will once again be holding some fabulous workshops specifically geared toward older adults. At St. Agnes Library, we will host a writing workshop called LiveStories: Using Writing And Drama to Share Your Personal Story. The workshop will be led by professional teaching artists Lauren Jost and Annie Montgomery, with whom I worked on a similar program last year at NYPL's Grand Central Library.

"It's the jokes. I need the jokes."

This is something a young library patron said to me the other day. He wanted me to find him a DVD of Abbott and Costello’s greatest movies and routines.  I felt an instant kinship with the boy, whom I’ll call Hal. “Yes,” I thought as I took to the catalog. “It’s the jokes.”