Twitter

Part of your job this year is to become connected to the online world of literary scholarship and see what's out there in the book world on social media. We'll start by getting you plugged in to the literary corner of Twitter. 

1. Sign up for Twitter. If you prefer not to use your real name, that's okay! Ask your parents about their comfort level with having you sign up on Twitter, and make sure any information you post in your profile fits within their parameters. 

2. Let us know your Twitter handle on our Google+ Community, so we can follow you!

3. Follow these 30 feeds. Some are relevant to the literature we're reading, some are relevant to literary life in Virginia, and some relate to American history. The name of the feed is followed by the Twitter name in parentheses. To find each feed, put that Twitter name (like @pshares) into the search box on Twitter. 

Edgar Allan Poe (@Edgar_Allan_Poe)
Ploughshares Literary Journal (@pshares)
Pen American (@PENamerican)
Book Riot (@bookriot)
Arts and Letters Daily (@aldaily)
Moby Dick (@suckitahab)
Mark Twain (@TheMarkTwain) 
Poetry Daily (@poetry_daily)
Poetry Book Society (@PoetryBookSoc)
The Paris Review (@parisreview)
NPR Books (@nprbooks)
Norfolk Public Library (@norfpubliclib)
Virginia Center for the Book (@va_ctr_book)
At Your Library (@atyourlibrary)
Oxford American (@oxfordamerican)
Library of Virginia (@libraryofVA)
YA Books Central (@yabookscentral)
School Library Journal (@sljournal)
American History Fun Facts (@AmericanHistFF)
American History TV (@cspanhistory)
Smithsonian Museum of American History (@amhistorymuseum)
Virginia History (@virginiahistory)
Virginian Pilot (@pilotnews)
Hampton Roads (@hamptonroads)
Virginia Opera (@vaopera)
Virginia Symphony (@vasymphony)
Emily Dickinson (@E_Dickinson)
Walt Whitman (@tweetsofgrass)
Nathaniel Hawthorne (@hawthorneswords)
George Washington (@foundingfather)

4. Tweet and interact! You can post Tweets about the books you read, your own writing, or just observations about daily life. To reply to someone's Tweet, or to direct a Tweet to a specific person, just include their Twitter username with the @ sign in the Tweet. 

5. Get fancy! You can use hashtags to categorize your posts. For example, if you're posting about The Scarlet Letter, you might include #boston or #puritans or #embroidery. You can also retweet others' Tweets, "favorite" others' Tweets by clicking on the star icon, and set up lists within the feeds you follow. 

We'll add more feeds as we go through the year. Take a couple weeks to practice and get comfortable with Twitter. You won't be graded on your Twitter feed in the first few weeks, so you'll have time to get up to speed. As always, if you have questions, ask!