You may have said those words once or twice yourself, perhaps? (If not, please leave this blog. Now.)
It may comfort you to know that you are not alone in that sentiment: even established writers think so, now and then—and have for decades, if not centuries. To prove it, Michael Hoffman has combed [...]

The title of Jim Shepard’s latest collection, You Think That’s Bad, could also be a creative mantra. Here the veteran writer discusses his research process, the apocalyptic state of the world, the (possible) irrelevancy of literature to the apocalypse, his epic mustache—and other matters of importance.

Marriage is so last century. Natalie Bakopoulos contemplates the demise of the marriage plot and Jeffrey Eugenides’s complex, undermining revival of it in his aptly-titled novel, The Marriage Plot. Is love still the ultimate trump card? Dear reader, it is. With some qualifications.

“To love and to express it is to be vulnerable. To create works of art is to be vulnerable, and it’s hard for people to let themselves be vulnerable. Especially in this world, where the internet lets us democratically savage one another, it’s even scarier, but the courage to be an artist means also the courage to love and to express it.” So says Robert Olen Butler in this candid interview with Emily Alford.

We love TED here at FWR–which, in case you haven’t encountered it before, you’re welcome, and I hope you didn’t have any work to do this month. This is an old TED talk, but one I hadn’t heard before and one I’ve been thinking about–particularly because it challenges the concept of storytelling.
In his TED [...]

It’s no secret that we’re big fans of Eileen Pollack’s work at FWR. In fact, as our Founding and Features Editor, Anne Stameshkin, noted in an addendum to a 2009 interview with the author that we published on the site, Eileen Pollack–and her Contemporary Novel class at the University of Michigan–was one of the inspirations [...]

When Twitter arrived on the scene, its proponents found themselves defending the very short. James Poniewozik put Twitter in historical context, and, in the New York Times, writer and teacher Andy Selsberg argued that writing short could make you a better writer.
Now, in the L.A. Times, Pico Iyer writes a defense of the [...]

This week’s feature is Anna Solomon’s debut novel, The Little Bride, which was published in September by Riverhead. Solomon’s short fiction has appeared in One Story, The Georgia Review, Harvard Review, The Missouri Review, and Shenandoah, among others. She is the recipient of two Pushcart Prizes and The Missouri Review Editor’s Prize. Her essays have [...]

Character likability. “Plot-driven” as pejorative. Research limits in historical fiction. The mail-order-bride as escape route. The double-edged sword of social media. Anna Solomon tells it straight in this conversation with Sara Schaff.

In conversation with Julie Judkins, author Scott Nadelson discusses how the “mad mystic hammering” of Bob Dylan inspired him to become a writer, why being a formerly reluctant reader informs his teaching, and how New Jersey has evolved in his fiction from an actual place to a state of being.