Page as Stage
The author of fox woman get out! explores the connections between poetry and dance.
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Craft Capsules
In our weekly series of craft essays, some of the best and brightest minds in contemporary literature explore their craft in compact form, articulating their thoughts about creative obsessions and curiosities in a working notebook of lessons about the art of writing.
The Poetics of Temperature
The author of fox woman get out! offers a climatic approach to reading and writing verse.
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The Myth of Realism: Belief and Incredulity in Fiction
The author of The Last Language explores the relationship between individual subjectivity and the ability to suspend disbelief when reading fiction.
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Hearing Voices: Characterization and Language
The author of The Last Language considers the relationship between character and speech.
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Withholding and Revelation: Managing Information in Fiction
The author of The Last Language considers how to strike the right note of ambiguity in a novel.
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Write Like a Translator
The translator of Luis Felipe Fabre’s Recital of the Dark Verses shares lessons from translation that can improve all creative prose.
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In Bad Faith: Notes on Fidelity in Translation
The translator of Luis Felipe Fabre’s Recital of the Dark Verses considers the nuances of crafting a faithful translation.
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Dis-identity Poetics
The author of Recital of the Dark Verses explores poetry and translation as an encounter with “the Other.”
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Bugging People: A Guide to Research
The author of Wine People explores how conducting interviews can inform narratives and characters.
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On Characterization
The author of Wine People offers an exercise in getting to know your characters.
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Falling in Love With Setting
The author of Wine People considers how a more expansive understanding of setting can deepen a story.
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The Perils of Using Real People in Your Prose
The author of Rachel to the Rescue and Ms. Demeanor explores the risky business of fictionalizing public figures.
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The Enchantment of Memory: Drawing Inspiration From Science and Fairy Tales
The author of The Museum of Human History discusses how the human mind and archetypal narratives informed her novel.
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The Challenge and Freedom of Managing a Large Cast of Characters
The author of The Museum of Human History considers how to manage a novel’s many threads.
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How to Trick Yourself Into Writing a Novel
The author of The Museum of Human History offers a method for moving from short stories to longer-form narratives.
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What the Orifice Wants: On Boundlessness
The author of I Do Everything I’m Told contemplates writing about and beyond personal boundaries.
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Respiratory Flow: Lungs as Knowledge
The author of I Do Everything I’m Told considers the role of the breath in poetic composition.
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Race, Desire, and Mirror-as-Beloved
The author of I Do Everything I’m Told explores the nuances of writing at the intersection of sex, love, queerness, and race.
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The Archive and the Everyday
The author of Spoken Word: A Cultural History and The Study of Human Life examines the power of recovering lost literary voices.
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A Shed Full of Golden Shovels
The author of Spoken Word: A Cultural History and The Study of Human Life considers how poets collaborate across time and form.
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On Covering
The author of Spoken Word: A Cultural History and The Study of Human Life explores how writers might “cover” literary works as musicians do songs.
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Notes on Irreverent Translation
The author of Mistaken for an Empire: A Memoir in Tongues offers an approach to critically engaging with a colonialist literary canon.
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Writing the Blur
The author of Mistaken for an Empire: A Memoir in Tongues considers how archival photography can provide a rich source for literary and sociopolitical inquiry.
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The Essay as Experiment
The author of Mistaken for an Empire: A Memoir in Tongues explores how formal experimentation and play can help move a writing project forward.
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The Accidental Poetry of Ninety-Nine-Cent Stores
The author of peep finds poetic surprises in the workaday language of commerce and culture.
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