Taking cues from everyone from Don DeLillo and Toni Morrison to Roland Barthes and Carmen Maria Machado, Ayşe Papatya Bucak questions a key principle of conventional craft wisdom.
“But if we don’t try, if we don’t look privilege squarely in the eye, then privilege is all we will see.” In part II of this essay on subject position in fiction, Leah De Forest looks at Z.Z. Packer’s “Brownies” and J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace.
“The focus here isn’t on point of view, but on positioning: a way of thinking about who a character is as well as who they are in relation to the others in the world of the story.” In part I of this essay on subject position in fiction, Leah De Forest explores Allan Gurganus’s “Blessed Assurance.”
“The writer’s first tool—even more important than language—is empathy”: Michael Byers on ZZ Packer’s “Brownies” as a story about becoming a writer.
