Write Into the Week: July 26, 2026

“Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else.”
–C. S. Lewis

Dear Writer,

I’m taking over for Elle this week and looking forward to sharing these resources with you! In this newsletter:

• A writing prompt to inspire your creativity.
• Reading recommendations in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.
• Publishing, residency, and retreat opportunities available now.
• Join our free Monday and Friday write-ins, and meet our community of writers.

Happy writing this week!

—Sean Glatch, Lead Administrator 

Writing Prompt: Pop Culture

Love it, hate it, or love to hate it, pop culture is pop for a reason. I love it when a writer can articulate a deeply personal relationship to something in pop culture, especially if that piece of culture is decidedly “lowbrow” or otherwise perceived as “unintelligent.”

Pop culture speaks to us because it reflects true experiences about our lives and situations, even if it does so in ways deemed overly simplistic or gratuitous. And that includes pop culture that is downright bad or offensive: we can disagree with it, but we still engage with it. 

So, here’s what I want you to do: 

Think of a piece of pop culture that you resonate with or feel strongly about. 

By pop culture, I mean anything with a lot of visibility in the public sphere: movies, TV, music, celebrity gossip, sports news, games, memes, etc. Feel free to choose something from a prior decade or even century. 

Now, I want you to answer the following questions in a freewrite:

1. In what ways does this piece of pop culture feel like or reflect your life right now?
2. What is your personal relationship to your piece of pop culture? How does it show up uniquely in your life?
3. What verbs, images, sounds, and feelings most closely evoke the feeling of it? 

If you’re writing fiction, feel free to approach this from the vantage of a character you want to write. Maybe, for example, you want to write about a character who possesses an odd, intense obsession with a TV show you hate, a song you don’t understand, or a parasocial relationship with the royal family. 

Do this freewrite for at least 8 minutes. Then, use your responses as the springboard for a poem, story, or essay where you explore and expand upon a personal relationship to pop culture. 

A Closer Look: Pop Culture Ekphrasis 

Traditionally, ekphrastic writing is writing inspired by classical art, such as painting or sculpture. But you can be ekphrastic about anything: dance, photography, dreams, and yes—pop culture. 

The goal of ekphrasis is threefold: 

1. To evoke the feeling or sensation of the artwork, including what it might be like to engage with it. 
2. To reveal something in a piece of art that might otherwise be hidden, and 
3. To explore a broader relationship between the viewer and the art.  

I like ekphrastic writing precisely because it lets me explore a richer relationship to the world, with art as the vehicle for that. I can’t just write about myself and experiences; I’m forced to transmit the experience of something outside of myself, even if that experience is internal. 

Besides, it’s a fun exercise to write ekphrastically, describing in close detail a piece of art through one’s experience of it. That’s actually where ekphrasis comes from—it’s Greek for “description,” as it was a common rhetorical exercise for students in Ancient Greece to write descriptions of art as practice for descriptive argumentation or storytelling. 

So, our goal is to take this idea of ekphrasis and apply it to pop culture. Let’s look at a few examples I admire. 

Reading Recommendations: Pop Culture Writing

Here are some great examples of pop culture ekphrasis that I love:

Poetry: “Laura Palmer Graduates” by Amy Woolard.

I love Twin Peaks. I love the worlds that David Lynch (rest in peace) creates. Naturally, any poem that tries to capture Lynch’s work has big shoes to fill—and this poem is the best I’ve read in the genre. I love the attention to image, how it recreates the small town Americana feel of Twin Peaks, complete both a noir-like nihilism and grasping for life. I mean, “alive is a little present I / Give myself once a day”—so good! 

Fiction: I’m going to give you two recommendations.

My first is “Especially Heinous” by Carmen Maria Machado. It’s a novella-length take on Law & Order: SVU, but it gets really dark and speculative, and the story format—told in episode vignettes—is so clever and inventive. I first read this story about 10 years ago; two hours passed by in a blink. 

Because this story is so long, I’ll also recommend a shorter one: “moments when i as a teenage girl felt most connected to famed tv mobster tony soprano” by Mariya Kurbatova.

So, I have to admit, I’ve never seen The Sopranos. I know, I know, it’s the best TV show ever made—I’ll get around to it. 

But I loved reading this set of story snapshots, which almost read like prose poems to me. A teenage girl’s mind is lent to a show that is markedly not written by or for teenage girls; and I felt, somehow, that the energy was more Twin Peaks than Sopranos (though, again, I haven’t seen The Sopranos). 

Nonfiction: “Loving the Timberwolves When They’re Good (or Bad)” by Hanif Abdurraqib.

“the Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said that he felt no more empty losing the series than he had when the Celtics won the championship in 2024. He was going for something philosophical—about the relentless pursuit of greatness, undertaken by a collective, and about how, more often than not, win or lose, the result is a sense of ache when you realize that you have to do it again next season.”

A brief anecdote about Hanif. I saw him read last weekend at the NYC Poetry Festival on Governor’s Island, on which there was also a live showing of the World Cup Finale. One of the staff on the island asked him if he was here for the poetry festival or the world cup. He said the poetry festival. The staff member looks him up and down and says “you look like a sports boy, not a poem boy.” 

Thankfully for us, Hanif is both a poem boy and a sports boy. I love the way he explores his relationship to sports, particularly basketball, a sport he’s said elsewhere has given him the kind of hope and belonging he needed when he was much worse off than he is now. I urge you to write about a personal relationship to pop culture the way he does about the Timberwolves. 

Publishing Opportunities: 

• Passager Journal — Submission Window: July 15 – September 15, or until they reach their submission cap (400). Passager Journal publishes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by authors who are 50 and older. In this instance, writers must be 50 or older by February 1st, 2027, to submit. 
• Literary Mama — Rolling Submissions. Literary Mama seeks submissions “by anyone who identifies as a mother, or with the journey of motherhood, or the act of mothering in its many forms.” Their interests include writers from non-normative experiences of motherhood and writers who act as caretakers for parents. (Our instructor Rudri Patel is a senior editor here!)
• Poetry Wales — Submission Window: July 27 – August 10, or until they reach their submission cap (550). Their theme is On the Body, with interest in work that questions assumptions about bodies and invites us to discover new ways of thinking through the body. 

Residency, Retreat, & Fellowship Opportunities:

• Vashon Artist Residency — Application Deadline: August 19, 2026. Located on Vashon Island, in the heart of the Salish Sea, Vashon Artist Residency offers a peaceful waterfront retreat with comfortable, thoughtfully designed living and working spaces for visual, literary, performing, media and interdisciplinary artists. Applicants must be at least 21 years old and not enrolled in a full-time, matriculated degree program. 
• The Center for Fiction / Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellowship — Application Deadline: July 31, 2026. The program annually provides financial support, professional and creative development, personalized mentorship, and community engagement to nine early-career, New York City-based fiction writers. Learn more about the program and meet our current Fellows below.
• The Poetry Project’s Emerge—Surface—Be Fellowship for Emerging Poets — Application Deadline: August 3, 2026. Mentors CAConrad, JJJJJerome Ellis, m.s. RedCherries, Christopher Rey Pérez, and Kim Rosenfield will each select an emerging poet to work with. Over the course of nine months, Fellows will be given the opportunity to work one-on-one with their Mentor to develop their craft; explore publication and performance opportunities; and reflect on the professional and community-based dimensions of a writing life. Meetings between Fellows and Mentors can take place both in-person and virtually.

Monday and Friday: Free Group Writing Sessions

Come write with us! Community write-ins are a great way to meet other writers, and carve out space in your calendar for your writing.

Monday: Write Into the Week with Elle

Join me (Elle) for an hour of mindset support, goal setting, community, and dedicated time to write! We’ll meet on Monday at 11 AM Eastern time, at this Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83999379617

Friday: Open Write-In

Join the Writers.com staff for a 90-minute writing session each Friday from 11 AM to 12:30 PM Eastern time. We will write together for the first hour. In the last, optional half hour, we’ll share our writing with one another and connect.

To add yourself, join our newsletter using the join box above, and add yourself to the “Friday Write-Ins” list at the bottom of any email. We’ll send you a Zoom link the morning of the call.