Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘writers on writing’

Shop Talk |

A Brief History of an Ongoing Series: a guest post by Peter Turchi

by Celeste Ng

Editor’s note: As part of our focus on teaching this month, we’re delighted to present this guest post by Peter Turchi. Nearly twenty years ago, when I became director of the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers, I moved into a small office that had been left neat and nearly empty by the previous director. Most of what he left behind were helpful files and books, but under the desk there was also a cardboard box filled with miscellaneous manuscripts, some stapled, some paper clipped, some typed, some covered with handwritten notes and corrections. Months passed before I asked […]


Interviews |

Write from Your Own Chair: An interview with Bret Lott on teaching

by Steven Wingate

In the midst of a stellar authorial career and after a quarter century of teaching creative writing, Bret Lott takes a moment to talk about sending students in the right direction, maintaining a sincere workshop practice, and keeping your writing (and reading) life alive as you teach.


Shop Talk |

Under the Influence… of prepositions?!

by J.T. Bushnell

Before submitting stories to workshop in graduate school, I spent hours combing my sentences for inefficiencies. I scrutinized verbs. I wrenched clauses from passive construction. I asked myself some hard questions about adjectives. My classmates often called my writing “clean,” which pleased me. I aspired toward concision. One term workshop was led by an intimidating man largely considered a genius among the graduate students. He introduced us to Chekhov and eviscerated stories with uncanny precision. When my turn came, I was nervous—with good reason. The week my story was up, he sent an email asking everyone to bring three pages […]


Shop Talk |

Writers Writing About Writing: The Dirty Little Secret – a guest post by Richard Goodman

by Celeste Ng

Editor’s note: As part of our focus on teaching this month, we’re delighted to present this guest post by Richard Goodman. When a writer publishes a book about writing, I’m often excited to read it.  Especially if it’s by a writer whom I admire.  He or she has been in the trenches, encountered problems and, more often than not, has solved them—or come near enough.  And he or she can write, which means it’s a pretty good bet the book will be readable.  So, I think: let’s hear what this writer has to say.  I want to learn, like we […]


Shop Talk |

Under the Influence… of Stuart Dybek

by Kelly Luce

The first serious writing course I took was an undergraduate seminar on image taught by Stuart Dybek. Stuart stressed to us the importance of the well-chosen detail, the picture that would sear itself onto the reader’s retina all at once, creating a meaning-packet that was intuitively felt but also stood up to thematic interrogation. He gave an example that’s never left me: a drop of blood in a puddle of lime juice. I don’t know whether this image came off the top of his head or if it was taken from a published piece by another writer; I don’t remember […]


Essays |

The Future of Literary Citizenship: A Review Essay

by Anna Leahy

With the rise of digital culture, teachers must examine how to help students connect with literature all over again, and teachers who are also writers have a particular interest in building students’ “literary citizenship.” Writer and teacher Anna Leahy looks for perspectives on this dilemma in four books by Marjorie Garber, Christina Vischer Bruns, Kevin Stein, and David Orr.


Essays |

The Problem of the Author: On Not Reading Autobiography into the Writing of Andre Dubus

What is the difference between art and life, between the writer and the writing? In this essay on the late, great Andre Dubus, we learn how Dubus recognized “transformative moments” as authors Richard Ford and Anne Beattie, among others, weigh in on his talents, and his legacy.


Shop Talk |

Do words hurt the world?

by Celeste Ng

In the Guardian, author Rick Gekoski argues that writing is “bad for you”: When I am writing I wander in a fug all day, wake in the middle of the night – waking my wife Belinda as well – and stagger downstairs to record a thought or two. Leave the bed with my mind whirling with gorgeously formed sentences which are as evanescent as the smell of lily of the valley, and about as easy to recall. By the time I get to the keyboard their perfection (as it seems to me in my drowsy creative mode) has dissipated, and […]


Interviews |

Not Just Visible But Beautiful: An Interview with Kevin Brockmeier

by Polly Stewart

Known for stories and novels that force us to question the conventional dichotomy between realist and fantasy fiction, Kevin Brockmeier knows how to reveal the strangeness of the world around us. In conversation with Mary Stewart Atwell, Brockmeier discusses his new novel, The Illumination, and the compelling metaphors that inform his writing.


Shop Talk |

Book of the Week: Season of Water and Ice, by Donald Lystra

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

This week’s feature is Donald Lystra’s debut novel Season of Water and Ice. Lystra, a retired engineer, lives in Ann Arbor and spends part of each summer in northern Michigan, on the Leelanau Peninsula, where this book is set. His short fiction has appeared in many literary journals, including Other Voices, The North American Review, Passages North, and The Greensboro Review. A story called “Family Way,” which eventually grew into Season of Water and Ice, appeared in Cimarron Review in 2006, and an excerpt from the book appeared in Natural Bridge in 2009. This is his first novel. This novel […]




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