Writing is as much a compulsion as a career. People who write often feel so strongly compelled that they ache or feel empty when NOT writing regularly.

Writers often see the world just a bit differently, too. Where everyone else sees falling snow, poets like Mary Oliver see stars in the dark trees. She presents the beauty of a simple moment. A turn of phrase can capture all the anguish of loss in a few words, like the rosy gloom of Sassoon’s The Rear-Guard. A writer’s slanted view of the world finds poetry in the simple, the mundane, and even the horrible.

Fiction writers and poets will doubtless help everyone come to terms with this difficult year, just as they helped many escape it, if just for a brief while.