“Ethnographic fiction, and all fiction in general, depends on Kierkegaardian leaps of imaginative faith, which is not the same thing as an ‘anything goes’ world in which facts don’t matter.” JT Torres on variation and verisimilitude.
Something I often heard in my experience as an MFA student was that one should write “painfully slow,” making every sentence count by tinkering with each word before moving on to the next one. In short: the story stalls, or never soars. The sentence is god. Typically, creative writing courses focus on the language of scene, character, plot, and dialogue the way we learn the parts of speech. This is the predicate; it should follow the subject sounds incredibly similar to This is the denouement; it should follow the climax. Even at the graduate level, workshops expend their energy with […]
JT Torres talks with Don Reardon about his debut novel, The Raven’s Gift, and how “survival” impacts his philosophy of teaching, writing, and life, as well as what it means to write Alaska today.
Peter Selgin’s debut novel, Life Goes to the Movies, is based in large part on his experiences growing up in New York in the 1970s. JT Torres talks to the author about bringing fact to fiction, strategies for the revision process, why identity is so important in his work, and more. Following the interview is an exclusive excerpt from Selgin’s novel-in-progress, Hattertown.
