Prompt to Page

Elizabeth Kilcoyne, author of Wake the Bones, discusses her own complicated relationship to writing prompts. She used to think she was "anti-prompt," but now she appreciates their help with what she calls "the sticky bits of literature." 

In other words, she continues, "that part of your manuscript that you keep wanting to turn away from and keep wanting to turn away from and keep ignoring.... I feel like [writing prompts] are always the sort of saving grace that I go to, to move into the next phase of a draft." 

Move into the next phase of your draft with help from Elizabeth's prompt.

About Elizabeth Kilcoyne

Elizabeth Kilcoyne is an author, playwright, and poet, born and raised in Kentucky. Her first novel, Wake the Bones, a YA Southern Gothic from Wednesday Books, is a finalist for the William C. Morris Debut Award, and received a starred review from both Publisher's Weekly and Kirkus, who described her as "a new standard-bearer in YA Horror." She currently lives in Lexington, Kentucky, where she gardens, serves on the organizational team for a local community vegetable market, and teaches writing. 

For our twentieth episode, author Angela Jackson-Brown, the keynote speaker for the Carnegie Center's upcoming Books in Progress conference, discusses the importance of writing every day. 

"That doesn't mean sit down every day and write for three hours," she says. "But it does mean every day pick a time and write for 15 minutes. And then if you have another 15, write for another 15 minutes. But make the commitment that every day you're going to show up to the page. Because if you don't show up, the stories don't get told."

Angela's writing prompt will help you get to know your characters before you sit down to write.

About Angela Jackson-Brown

Angela Jackson-Brown is an award-winning writer, poet and playwright who is an Associate Professor in the creative writing program at Indiana University in Bloomington. She also teaches in the graduate program at the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University in Louisville, KY. 

She is the author of Drinking From a Bitter Cup, House Repairs, When Stars Rain Down and The Light Always Breaks. In October of 2023, Angela’s next novel, Homeward, a follow-up to When Stars Rain Down, will be published by Harper Muse.

For our nineteenth episode, poet LeTonia Jones shares two writing prompts that will help you write more mindfully.

She also discusses her initial reluctance to call herself a poet. “The sooner you claim it, that it is true about you, the better it is for all of us,” she says. “Our words are medicine, and we never know when we have just the medicine that somebody else needs.”

About LeTonia Jones

LeTonia Jones is a Kentuckian who has used the alchemy of arts and activism for over 25 years. She’s led public arts campaigns and projects to center the lived experiences of marginalized people. Her purpose is to stir emotions, facilitate space for insight, and move individuals and communities toward greater acts of care and love.

In 2007, she collaborated with author and award-winning playwright Eve Ensler to pilot a two-week arts and activism festival and campaign to end violence against women and girls in Kentucky. In 2009, she co-created a writing group for incarcerated women called SwallowTale Project. In 2020, LeTonia co-founded Bloodroot Ink, a writing collective for BIPOC Womyn.

Black Girl at the Intersection is Jones’ debut book and introduces her as a poet who believes acts of witnessing and of being witnessed are revolutionary.

For our eighteenth episode, we talk to poet Danni Quintos, who shares a writing prompt from cartoonist and graphic novelist Lynda Barry. Danni describes how both drawing and knitting have influenced her writing practice.

Danni also talks about finding people who can provide feedback for your work. "Find your readers and cling to them for dear life," she says. "If you find somebody who's a good reader, never let them go, because it is not super common to find somebody who understands not only the the good things that you're doing, but that their criticism or critique is really helpful and kind of understands how to make it better."

About Danni Quintos

Danni Quintos is the author of the poetry collection, Two Brown Dots (BOA Editions, 2022), chosen by Aimee Nezhukumatathil as winner of the Poulin Prize, and PYTHON (Argus House, 2017), an ekphrastic chapbook featuring photography by her sister, Shelli Quintos. She is a Kentuckian, a mom, a knitter, and an Affrilachian Poet. Her work has appeared in Poetry Magazine, Cincinnati Review, Cream City Review, The Margins, Best New Poets 2015, Salon, and elsewhere. 

Prompt to Page is brought to you in partnership with the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning.

Listen to Episode 17

For our seventeenth episode, we talk to Andrew Shaffer, author of Feel the Bern: A Bernie Sanders Mystery. Andrew describes what it’s like to write fiction about public figures and how studying comedy writing at The Second City has influenced his writing process. He shares a writing prompt from his wife, author Tiffany Reisz, who appeared on episode seven.

Andrew believes that the well known saying to write what you know “doesn’t mean that you can only write stuff about your own life.” Instead of taking that advice literally, you should “write what you know in terms of emotional truths.” 

About Andrew Shaffer

Andrew Shaffer is the New York Times bestselling author of Hope Never Dies: An Obama Biden Mysteryand over a dozen other humorous works of genre fiction from mystery to horror. He is a five-time Goodreads Choice Award nominee. 

An Iowa native, Shaffer lives in Louisville with his wife, novelist Tiffany Reisz. His latest release is the cozy mystery Feel the Bern: A Bernie Sanders Mystery.

For our sixteenth episode, we talk to Marcia Thornton Jones, author of more than 135 books for children. Marcia describes her own complicated relationship to writing prompts and how she eventually realized that “every writer writes from prompts.”

She explains that “something prompted every one of us to sit down and pour words onto the page. It could have been a smell or an aroma that automatically transports us back to a memory, or it could be a snippet of dialogue that we overhear, or it could be our desire to understand some kind of idea or behavior or character behavior or a big life idea. Whatever it was, something compels us to make sense of our world through the art of writing.”

Marcia shares the process she has developed for using writing prompts in her classes. She asks students to complete a pre-prompt prompt, a craft-oriented writing prompt, and a post-prompt prompt. 

Listen to the complete episode to find out how to incorporate these techniques into your writing process.

About Marcia Thornton Jones

Marcia Thornton Jones has traditionally published more than 135 books for children with sales totaling more than 43 million copies worldwide. Her works include Woodford Brave, Ratfink, Champ, and Writing Kids Books: The Ultimate Guide. 

She co-authored seven popular series including “Keyholders” and “The Adventures of the Bailey School Kids.” She is also the co-author of the re-imagined graphic novel series “Adventures of the Bailey School Kids” published by Graphix by Scholastic Inc.

Marcia lives in Lexington, Kentucky, where she teaches writing and is the coordinator of Carnegie Center’s Author Services, including the Author Academy, mentoring, and manuscript review services.

For our fifteenth episode, we talk to Katerina Stoykova, author of Second Skin and Senior Editor of Accents Publishing. Katerina discusses how she uses her journals to create writing prompts for herself and offers advice for doing so with your own journals.

She believes that writers should "learn to write when you don't have time for writing." She says writing "when you don't have time... prepares you a whole lot better for stretches of time when you do have time for writing."

About Katerina Stoykova

Katerina Stoykova is the author of several award-winning poetry books in English and Bulgarian, as well as the Senior Editor of Accents Publishing. Her latest book, Second Skin (ICU, 2018, Bulgarian) received the Vanya Konstantinova biannual national poetry award, as well as a grant from the European Commission's program Creative Europe for translation and publication in English. 

Katerina acted in the lead roles for the independent feature films Proud Citizen and Fort Maria, both directed by Thom Southerland. Her poems have been translated into German, Spanish, Ukrainian, Bangla, Farsi, and a volume of her selected poems, translated into Arabic by acclaimed poet Khairi Hamdan, was published in Arabic from Dar Al Biruni press in 2022.

Submit

We’d love to see what you’re writing! Submit a response to Katerina's prompt for a chance to have it read on a future episode of the podcast.

Listen to Episode 14

For our fourteenth episode, we talk to Ellen Birkett Morris, author of Lost Girls. Ellen shares three writing prompts: a poetry prompt, a fiction prompt, and a food writing prompt. 

Ellen began writing creatively when she was in her mid-thirties, and she encourages listeners to “embrace your identity as a writer. If you’re writing, you are a writer. You don’t have to feel intimidated or competitive or any of those things.”

About Ellen Birkett Morris

Ellen Birkett Morris is the author of Lost Girls, winner of the Pencraft Award, and finalist for the Clara Johnson, IAN and Best Book awards, and the poetry chapbooks Surrender and Abide. Her work has appeared in Antioch Review, Shenandoah, and South Carolina Review, among other journals. Morris received grants from the Elizabeth George Foundation and Kentucky Foundation for Women and a fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council. She holds an MFA from Queens University-Charlotte.

Join the Prompt to Page Writing Group

Wednesday, Nov. 30, 6:00 p.m.

Spend time working on a cross-genre writing prompt, get feedback, and share writing and publishing tips with a supportive community of other writers. Open to all writing levels and genres (fiction, poetry, memoir, family stories, etc.).

Registration is required.

Submit

We’d love to see what you’re writing! Submit a response to one of Ellen’s prompts for a chance to have it read on a future episode of the podcast.

For our thirteenth episode, we talk to Sarah Combs, author of Breakfast Served Anytime and The Light Fantastic. Sarah shares her love of writing groups, reading "at whim" and a writing prompt that works for all levels and genres. If you're gearing up for National Novel Writing Month, you may find her prompt especially helpful.

"It can be pretty scary to have a blank page in front of you and hope to see a novel draft by the end," she says. "So maybe it makes things easier if you think of scenes as the building blocks of a novel. And if you create a scene one by one, then eventually you might have a novel."

About Sarah Combs

Sarah Combs is the author of the young adult novels Breakfast Served Anytime and The Light Fantastic, both from Candlewick Press. She lives with her family in Lexington, where she leads writing workshops at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning.

Join the Prompt to Page Writing Group
Wednesday, Oct. 26, 6:00 p.m.

Spend time working on a cross-genre writing prompt, get feedback, and share writing and publishing tips with a supportive community of other writers. Open to all writing levels and genres (fiction, poetry, memoir, family stories, etc.).

Registration is required.

Submit

We’d love to see what you’re writing! Submit a response to Sarah’s prompt for a chance to have it read on a future episode of the podcast.

For our twelfth episode, we talk to Shawn Pryor, author of the graphic novel series Cash and Carrie and a guest at this year’s Comic Surge. Shawn describes the collaborative process of writing graphic novels and shares three of his favorite prompts. He explains how he uses writing prompts both when he’s working on books and when he just wants to have fun.

Shawn believes that too many writers are under the impression that “if it’s not perfect off the jump, then it’s not going to work.” He says, “There is no such thing as perfection. None…. And you limit yourself if you think that perfection is the only way that you’re gonna be able to tell your story.”

About Shawn Pryor

Shawn Pryor’s (he/him) work includes the middle-grade graphic novel series Cash and Carrie, the 2019 Glyph Nominated sports graphic novel F.O.R.C.E., and several books for Capstone’s Jake Maddox Sports and Adventure prose series, and Kids Sports Stories children’s books. Currently, he’s the writer of the hi-lo reader series The Gamer with illustrator Francesca Ficorilli and the upcoming middle-grade graphic novel Fast Break with illustrator Courtney Hahn.

In his free time, he enjoys reading, cooking, listening to streaming music playlists, and talking about why Zack from the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers is the greatest Black superhero of all time.

He is represented by Kelly Sonnack of the Andrea Brown Literary Agency.

Join the Prompt to Page Writing Group

Wednesday, Sept. 28, 6:00 p.m.

Spend time working on a cross-genre writing prompt, get feedback, and share writing and publishing tips with a supportive community of other writers. Open to all writing levels and genres (fiction, poetry, memoir, family stories, etc.).

Registration is required.

Submit

We’d love to see what you’re writing! Submit a response to one of Shawn’s prompts for a chance to have it read on a future episode of the podcast.