Downtown Brooklyn: A Journal of Writing

05/12/2022

Writing assignment:

Mary-Alice Daniel's memoir traces tangled roots and maps myriad coastlines to reach a destination called home

20/02/2021

20/07/2020

23/06/2020

Creative Writing Assignment: Perform the literary equivalent of making solemn faces emerge from hazy portraits. Make solemnity emerge from haze.

Rendered in thick pencil, a new series of portraits by Seoul-based artist GyoBeom An feature models' faces obscured in a monochromatic haze. While the distinct characteristics remain, a smudged overlay casts each subject in a blur. An tells Colossal that he begins with a figurative drawing that's co

16/06/2020

Creative Writing Assignment: Write a novel of things unattained.

I kept what became the epigraph of my novel—“pleasure disappoints, possibility never”—taped above my desk (the many desks, the many cities) throughout the writing process. It came from Kierkegaard’…

13/06/2020

Writing Assignment: Perform the literary equivalent of pinning photos of the sky to a massive, spherical sculpture.

Artist Sarah Sze explores the myriad conceptions of time and space through a tremendous, new spherical sculpture. Titled "Shorter than the Day" —a reference to Emily Dickinson's poem "Because I could not stop for Death," which considers the comfort found in life's finality—Sze's piece weighs fiv...

21/05/2020

21/05/2020

Writing assignment: Create wider, deeper, better realities.

I came to the conclusion that what I loved more than anything, and what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, was to think. Period.

21/05/2020

Erstwhile means gone.

21/05/2020

I used to say that we had gotten to the point where DTB was no longer a magazine with a page, but a page with a magazine. Well, now it's a page without a magazine.

21/05/2020

Writing Assignment: Turn your obsessions into fiction. Turn your fiction into obsessions.

Some tips for turning your obsessions—good and bad—into powerful stories.

20/05/2020

It still exists in my mind....

09/10/2018

Assignment: Make a mess in the name of process.

Husband-and-wife artist duo Rotem Tamir and Omri Zin created a pair of elaborate contraptions to help them laboriously make balloons and ink inside the gallery.

19/07/2018

Assignment: Stop feeling guilty for not writing every day. Never stop feeling guilty for not writing every day. Stop feeling guilty for writing every day. Never stop feeling guilty for writing every day.

The one thing that will make you a great writer

19/07/2018

Assignment: Stop attempting impossible reading projects. Never stop attempting impossible reading projects.

A couple of months ago, I texted a friend of mine and told him I was considering reading every one of Shakespeare’s plays over the summer—just ploughing through them, one after the other, like seas…

18/07/2018

Assignment: Make a list of your stuff and call it literature.

Thomas Clerc’s “Interior” is a tour of all the objects in the experimental writer’s 50-square-meter Paris apartment.

18/07/2018

Assignment: Write in the minefield of the imagination.

Dick Cluster interviews Gabriela Alemán, the author of “Poso Wells.”

18/07/2018

Assignment: Do only one thing. Only do one thing.

This idea of doing only one thing was sparked by an event that happened this week. I decided to delete all podcasts on my phone and only…

18/07/2018

Assignment: Perform the literary equivalent of making a TV series based on paintings.

Tales from the Loop is a sci-fi drama based on Simon Stålenhag’s art and will span eight episodes.

18/07/2018

Assignment: Broadcast to no-one.

Streaming is the new blogging, some say, where total committment to doing something interesting or offbeat in public attracts vast (and monetizable) audiences. But the long tail is still a dream: m…

18/07/2018

Assignment: Perform the literary equivalent of making images out of trash, toys, and chocolate syrup.

Brazilian photographer Vik Muniz wants people to see the world differently.

18/07/2018

Assignment: Actually interact with people.

Instagram's AMA and a few viral Tweets show there's still hope in hell.

17/07/2018

Assignment: Bend and twist reality.

The Authoritarian’s Rhetorical Playbook

17/07/2018

Assignment: Make a new city your home. Make a new home your city.

Easy ways to fit into a town where nobody knows your name, yet.

17/07/2018

Assignment: Make poetry worth reading.

A new wave of Canadian poets are giving us poems as complex and varied as the country itself

17/07/2018

Assignment: Salvage objectivity.

For decades now, objectivity—or even the idea that people can aspire toward ascertaining the best available truth—has been falling out of favor. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s well-known observation—“Ev…

17/07/2018

Assignment: Let poetry and politics overlap.

Here’s a look at 11 collections of poetry that make impressive use of the form and offer readers an increased perspective on the contemporary world.