Write into the Week: February 16, 2026

“Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.”
–James Baldwin

Dear Writer,

I hope you’re having a good start to your week. In this newsletter:

• A writing prompt to inspire your creativity.
• Reading and listening 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!

—Elle, Curriculum Specialist & Community Manager

Writer to Writer: My Funny Valentine

Valentine’s Day has a way of centering romantic love, but this week I’ve been thinking about a different kind of lover—one that’s a bit less likely to break my heart. This love doesn’t arrive with flowers or make grand gestures, but it does return again and again in small and ordinary, yet life changing ways. I’m talking about one of the true loves of my life—writing. Writing, for many of us, is a great and kind love. It’s the thing we turn to when we want to understand ourselves more clearly. It’s the home we go to when something inside us needs a safe place to land.

Like any deep or meaningful relationship, our connection to writing changes over time. There are seasons when it feels easy and reciprocal, when the words come quickly and everything seems to fall into place on the page. There are other seasons when the words may feel distant, or even silent, and we may start to wonder if we’ve lost whatever it was that once felt so natural. Those creative slumps can be hard, but remember that love isn’t measured by constant closeness. Real love always returns. The true measure is the  decision to come back, again and again, even full of doubts, even after long absences.

If, like me, writing is one of the great loves of your life, you never have to prove it. You only have to remain in conversation with it—to listen, to show up when you can, and to trust that it is still there, waiting for you—not demanding perfection, only presence.

Writing Prompt: The Love Letter

Write a love letter, but not to a person. Write a love letter to writing itself. This could take the form of an ode to the notebook that has held your secrets, or to the poem or sentence that arrived when you needed it most. It could also be written to the version of yourself who first fell in love with writing. 

Writer’s Tool of the Week: The Epistolary Door

When a scene or emotional truth feels difficult to access, try approaching it through a letter. Not because the letter itself will necessarily appear in the final draft of whatever you’re working on, but because the act of writing to someone often changes your relationship to what you say and how you say it. Letter writing can create intimacy, specificity, and urgency. Having a listener on the other side changes things.

First, choose someone as the letter’s recipient. This could be another character, a former version of yourself, a person who has passed, someone who will never read it, or even something abstract—your hometown, your body, grief, younger self, or your unwritten novel. Then begin.

Notice what happens to the voice. Letters tend to strip away performance, and replace it with honesty. They make room for both contradiction and confession. You may find yourself saying things you didn’t know you were holding back. Emotional truths may reveal themselves that previously felt inaccessible in other writing forms.

This is a way to start, but you don’t have to keep the letter format. Sometimes the letter becomes a scene, or it may reveal a single sentence worth carrying forward into your work in progress. Sometimes it simply opens a door.

Reading Recommendations: Love Poems Edition

• “Sonnet XVII” by Pablo Neruda. This sonnet begins with one of my favorite lines, “I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz…” I appreciate the way Neruda’s sonnet looks inward instead of outward. Rather than praising his beloved muse in grand or lavish terms, he describes a deep, hidden, more rooted love.
• “Having a Coke with You” by Frank O’Hara. This poem rejects traditional romantic language entirely, and replaces it with something casual and modern. O’Hara writes about the simple act of drinking a Coca-Cola with his love, and finds that moment more meaningful than great works of art.
• “Love After Love” – by Derek Walcott. Instead of focusing on romantic love for another person, Walcott writes about the moment when you return to yourself—when you greet your own life, face, and personal history with tenderness and acceptance. 
• “For Keeps” – by Joy Harjo. This modern love poem understands love as something both intimate and ancient. That while love is rooted in the present moment, it’s also connected to something far older than the two people inside it.

Publishing Opportunities:

• The Brooklyn Review – Submission Deadline: February 28, 2026. Currently accepting submissions of fiction only. What they’re looking for: Urgent, atmospheric narratives; deeply inhabited characters; formal invention; precision of language; self-aware humor; and generally polished, thoughtful stories. Accepted stories typically range between 3,000 and 7,000 words.
• Narrative Magazine Winter 2026 Story Contest – Submission Deadline: March 1, 2026. Open to all fiction and nonfiction writers. They’re looking for short shorts, short stories, essays, memoirs, photo essays, graphic stories, all forms of literary nonfiction, and excerpts from longer works of both fiction and nonfiction. Entries must be previously unpublished, no longer than 15,000 words, and must not have been previously chosen as a winner, finalist, or honorable mention in another contest.

Residency, Retreat, & Fellowship Opportunities:

• The de Groot Visiting Fellowship at the American Library in Paris – Applications Open: February 1 – March 1, 2026 – The Fellowship offers writers the opportunity to pursue their work in Paris for one month. Fellows receive a stipend and a “room of one’s own” at the Library. Open to all writers, from novelists to poets to historians. 
• The Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize 2026 – Submission Deadline: May 1, 2026. Awarded for the best piece of writing on the theme of JOY. Submissions can be fiction, non-fiction, or non-academic essays up to a maximum of 1,250 words. The top three submissions win a monetary reward. Please see the website for more details. 

Monday: Free Group Writing Session

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

To add yourself, click here, and we’ll send you a Zoom link the morning of the call. You can also always add yourself to or remove yourself from the “Friday Write-Ins” list at the bottom of this newsletter.

Note: There will be no Friday Write-In this week, as Frederick has travel. We will resume the following Friday, February 2.

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