NPR has just announced its third Three-Minute Fiction Contest. This year, the judge will be writer and critic Alan Cheuse.
The challenge? Write a story about this photo that can be read out loud in under three minutes–that’s about 600 words.
Cheuse compares a good short story to a lyric poem [...]

Alan Cheuse, for NPR:
Giving a book is not something we ought to do blindly. We give books to people we love because we think they will convey something about ourselves, something about the world as we see it or something about the world as we would like it to be. We only have one life [...]

All Things Considered: How do the undead in the Twilight series and HBO’s True Blood measure up to classic vamps? And why are vampires such a popular fixation in film and fiction?