Tell It Slant, Third Edition, 3rd Edition

14

The Power of Writing Communities

The fiction that artistic labor happens in isolation, and that artistic accomplishment is exclusively the provenance of individual talents, is politically charged and, in my case at least, repudiated by the facts. While the primary labor on Angels [in America] has been mine, more than two dozen people have contributed words, ideas and structures to these plays.

—TONY KUSHNER

In graduate school, I had the dream writing group: friends who made me laugh and who were also careful and attentive readers. We met in a quirky little room at a local tavern, a room decorated with Moët and Chandon champagne posters. Before settling into our work, we shared what we’d all been doing that week, in the areas of writing, submitting, ...