In June 2016, Jeanette Powers sent out a social media call egging on the artists of Poetic Underground—a whiskey drinking, verbal slinging, raucous and righteous open mic poetry sequence at the Uptown Arts Bar in Kansas City, MO—to contact her and request a prompt: a short, personally crafted phrase intended to be the inspiration for NEW SHIT! to spit at open mic night. Over the next week, she issued over one-hundred prompts, leading to the epic readings of volumes of New Shit! But other folks, many of whom were unable to attend open mic, wanted to be part of the shenanigans; so, the idea of a prompts book was born.

Prompts! A Spontaneous Anthology represents the outpouring of new work by both fledgling and established writers and artists, which was engendered, simply, by the offer of a prompt.