Essays

On the Cult of Craftism

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If craft is a writer’s fundamental heartbeat, then craftisim is hypertension.
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Essays

Why Bad Catholics Make Great Art

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Some of the best Catholic storytellers achieve their power at a distance from traditional devotion.
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Essays

The Knotty Lives of Victorian Soothsayers

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Despite their tremendous achievements, it isn’t possible—nor advisable—to cast any of these women in a wholly heroic light.
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Essays

Notes from St. John the Divine: On Joan Didion’s Memorial Service

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I wondered whether Joan would have been pleased by any of this.
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Essays

On Proprioception, the Sixth Sense of Storytelling

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Proprioception is a realm in which two specific craft aspects—character and setting—are wed.
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Essays

Reading Soviet Sci-Fi at the End of the World

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What I found was not a roadmap for escaping my circumstances but a strategy for how to operate within them.
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Essays

Cai Emmons on Women’s Rage

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I have been riding a rollercoaster of anger all my life.
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Essays

The Industrial Visions of Precisionist Art

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Industrial structures were the cathedrals of the machine age.
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Essays

On Shame, Abortion, and What’s Left Behind

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"For me, shame is located in my secret life as a writer. For my patients, shame is located in their choices and in their bodies."
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Essays

Shelve This in Memoir: Confessions of a Teenage Bookseller

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I’d begged my way into this job in the hopes that it might lead me closer to a literary life. And it would. Eventually.
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Essays

Just a Choice: LaToya Watkins on Motherhood

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Though I love my children fiercely, I don’t think I ever really grew into being their mother.
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Essays

How Many Errorrs Are in This Essay?

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Literature's history is a history of mistakes, errors, misapprehensions, simple typos.
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Essays

Cecily Wong on the Thrill of Nostalgia

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Like love, like ambition, nostalgia persists beyond logic, beyond our control.
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Essays

Culture Shock: Reassessing the Workshop

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The writing workshop is an American invention.
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Essays

The Poetic Life of Samuel Menashe

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Menashe focused on the work rather than the scene.
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Essays

A Debut Novelist Imagines Life After Her Own Death

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I was 17 years old when I died.
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Essays

From Cover to Cover: On the Pigeonholes of Publishing

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Before the cover creation process had even begun for 'The Evening Hero,' I requested a Korean book designer.
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Essays

Time Is Not the Longest Distance: Rereading ‘The Glass Menagerie’ as a Nonfiction Writer

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Tom’s assessment—that time is the longest distance—has often rung true for me in life, but not in literature.
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