Published in the October 27, 2014 issue of The New Yorker, "The Empties" by Jess Row is a postapocalyptic (or is it distopian?) short story set in the Northeast. What grabbed me about this story was in the fourth paragraph, where Row's characters step back and view their own narrative. What story are we in? What's happening?
I really love these books from the "Art of" series published by Graywolf Press. In Joan Silber's The Art of Time in Fiction she explores how writers use and manipulate time…
After reading "This Business of Latin" (La Question du Latin) and "The Bequest" (Le Legs) today, my first thought was: these stories would be hacked apart in a creative writing…
Due to a recent comment from a reader, I've been thinking about audience and writing. Audience is difficult to determine. Who is the audience for a story? How often do…
"Rollingwood" by Ben Marcus is a study in the passive narrator/character. It's behind The New Yorker's pay wall, but the abstract says it all, "short story about a man trying…
"Going for a Beer" by Robert Coover is a short, surreal journey of moments that bleed into one another and skip years. It reminds me of Jonathan Safran Foer's piece…
In the posthumously published excerpt from The Pale King entitled "Backbone" by David Foster Wallace, the reader follows a young boy with a goal: to be able to kiss every inch…
"Paranoia" by Said Sayrafiezadeh is a mix of humor and friendship set to the beat of the buildup for war and the slurring words of the news-cycle. The characters are in their…
"The Other Place" by Mary Gaitskill is a dark story about parenthood and growing up. To write is to have courage. Courage to explore. Courage to expose. Courage to be…
I'm going to try and not be flippant. In order to save you time and money, I will condense Donall Revell's book, The Art of Attention: A Poet's Eye, to…