The Loft Blog

Chris Stedman is a Minneapolis-based writer, speaker, and community organizer. He is the author of IRL: Finding Realness, Meaning, and Belonging in Our Digital Lives (2020) and Faitheist: How an Atheist Found Common Ground with the Religious (2012). 

This week's Family Book Club pick is What If by Samantha Berger and Mike Curato. This whimsical, inspiring picture book celebrates creativity and art in all of its forms—from the visual to the written to the physical to the mental. It's sure to get you thinking about different forms of expression.

This week's Family Book Club pick is The Voting Booth by Brandy Colbert. This fast-paced YA novel follows two teens, Marva and Duke, as they run into barrier after barrier trying to vote on election day. A smart, accessible commentary on our political system, this story is also a triumph of love.

Megha Majumdar’s A Burning is about a young Muslim woman in India who witnesses a terrorist attack and then makes a reckless post on Facebook. She is accused of being a terrorist and ultimately pays a terrible price. I'm interested in how Majumdar handles that price.

Warning: Spoilers in this post.

Every post in this series will focus a weekly reading and a list of prompts in response to that reading. Some of them will be focused on craft; some will ask you to evaluate content. This week, we're examining the essay "Living Like Weasels" by Annie Dillard and how to use structural image.

This week's Family Books Club pick is the YA novel-in-verse Kent State by Deborah Wiles. This beautiful work is an ode to the very real shooting at Kent State University in 1970, when the National Guard was called in and ultimately killed four students and wounded nine. It's a timely, topical read.

Every post in this series will focus a weekly reading and a list of prompts in response to that reading. Some of them will be focused on craft; some will ask you to evaluate content. This week, we're examining the poem "Rosa Parks" by Nikki Giovanni and the form of prose poetry.

This week's Family Book Club pick is The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani. This magical teen book is the first in a binge-worthy series guaranteed to sweep you into its land of fairy tales, sorcery, forbidden crushes, and the blurring lines between good and evil.

Roohi Choudhry was born in Pakistan and grew up in southern Africa and the middle east. As a creative writer who worked for more than a decade in data analysis and social research, she is passionate about helping people use left-brain systems alongside right-brain intuition.

Ge Gao is a Chinese writer based in New York City. She received a BA in philosophy from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and an MFA in creative nonfiction writing from Columbia University. Her essays have appeared in The Threepenny Review, Longreads, Words Without Borders, and elsewhere.

Every post in this series will include a weekly reading and a list of prompts in response to that reading. Some of them will be focused on craft; some will ask you to evaluate content. This week we're focusing on the short story "The Miniature Wife" by Manuel Gonzales and the use of absurdity.

Emily Wolahan is a writer and teacher who lives in San Francisco. She has been senior editor at Two Lines Press, editor at JERRY Magazine, and is currently a poetry editor at Tinderbox Poetry Journal. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and is the author of the poetry collection HINGE.