From the Archives: "Writing is the ultimate act of creative defiance."
From the Archives: Celeste Ng on her debut novel, debutante balls, and more.
It took lying bored and lonely in a hospital bed, waiting for my body to reset so...
In a way, I hope that my stories say again and again, “I choose life in the face...
From the Archives: What do the 2011 Japanese Tsunami, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and one family’s personal heartbreak have in common? For Ellen Prentiss Campbell, the answer lies in Pearl S. Buck’s 1948 young adult novel, The Big Wave, and the individual acts of creative defiance that help survivors not only carry on, but value life’s beauty more highly because they know it will not last.
From the Archives: “Trusting the mind and imagination to work in concert as we explore the author/character vortex is no grave sin—provided that we let both mind and imagination do their jobs in peace…”
From the Archives: “When structure is done well, it should be like architecture: you sense the overall feel of the building—tall, or airy, or strong—but you’re not looking at the buttresses that hold it up or the seams where parts are fastened together.”
“I remember waiting for an epiphany. Like a miracle, it would re-juice my imagination and add another layer to this project that now literally had my blood etched into its make-up.” Lyndsey Ellis on the physical toll of fiction-writing research.
David Huebert and Brad Roach discuss the climate crisis, character research, and Huebert’s latest collection, Chemical Valley.
“You will find yourself returning to these characters time and again, reconsidering the little choices that make your own life what it is.” Sophia Khan on Joann Smith’s debut collection, A Heaven of Their Choosing.
Countless writers aspire to contribute something lasting to literature. We labor over drafts. We seek innovative forms. We push ourselves to evoke particularities in tone, plot, character, circumstance, and word choice. Yet in these various pursuits, we might overlook what also endures: literary references.
Amy Janiczek on the American consumption of the spectacle of war in Aleksandar Hemon’s 2000 debut collection.
Polly Stewart talks with May Cobb about her new novel, The Hunting Wives, as part of Stewart’s “Women Crime Writers” series.
“I think each of us speak multiple languages. Not necessarily whole different tongues like Russian and English, but we speak different glosses. I like to think of those as languages.” Ian Ross Singleton talks with Cameron Finch about his debut novel, Two Big Differences.
