What is it?

Ok, But How? is a monthly(ish) newsletter about process. 

When I lived in Vermont and taught at Marlboro, a tiny liberal arts college, I used to take walks in the woods around the campus with colleagues and students between classes. Walking past red leaves or clinging to one anothers’ arms up slippery hills, we’d work through writing challenges, share new ideas, maybe pull out a book and read a passage out loud. Then (whenever I could), I’d bring everyone back to my house to make ravioli or latkes or ice cream from scratch and talk about how writing, like pasta dough, can get tough and overworked and needs time to rest.

Ok, But How? aspires to get as close as possible to an idea-walk and a conversation at the kitchen table. 

Who am I?

I’m a writer who lives in Vancouver, BC and teaches in the School of Creative Writing at UBC. I read eclectically, cook obsessively, and am always trying to figure out new ways to teach writing and reading. My collection of poems The Silk the Moths Ignore is available from Inlandia Institute. A few recent poems have appeared in Tinfish, The Rumpus, Typo, Carousel, and Court Green. I also have a few new essays: a brief one on participating in a collaborative homage to Bernadette Mayer (the project is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press) and a longer one in Contemporary Literature on how ambivalence, complicity, and feeling can coexist with critique in the work of Harryette Mullen. You can find me on Twitter or IG at @bronwentate or on my website.