Our Opinions Are Correct: We’re Still Traumatized By This Writing Debate
Not long ago, everybody was arguing about whether characters need to be "relatable". We get to the bottom of a debate that still makes us intensely grouchy. Plus we talk…
5 Over 50: 2025
For a decade we’ve devoted space in each November/December issue to celebrate debut authors over the age of fifty with first books published during the current calendar year. The writers…
Long Live the Longer Short Story: Depth Without a Novel’s Commitment
Our attention spans are being whittled to nonexistence by an increasingly impatient feedback loop, with social media, the internet, and AI competing to devour our attentional capacity. Yet when leafing…
Homecoming: the small web and release from the unitary public self
In 1776, a Quaker living in Philadelphia recovered from a severe illness with a peculiar conviction: they had died and been reborn as the Public Universal Friend. The Public Universal…
Reimagining Place: Setting as Convergence
Something useful that writers can do when setting fiction in a real place is to leave. Choosing projects that allow us to write about a place after we’ve moved away…
The Ungrateful Stranger: Whose Story Deserves Welcome?
On a spring evening in 2016, the day after Donald Trump won a series of primaries cementing his candidacy, I stepped into a hushed auditorium in midtown Manhattan and found…
Writers With Day Jobs: Earning a Living Outside of Literature
In 2018, as a younger writer in a different phase of life, I was thrilled to interview prolific author William Vollmann. A digital magazine employed me at the time, but…
Do Your Research: Using the Tools of Journalism to Write More Vivid Fiction
Endless research can be an occupational hazard. Johns taught a summer historical fiction workshop where only one writer out of ten brought pages for critique—the other nine had spent years…
The Retreat Has Left the Group Chat: Planning and Executing a Successful Retreat With Writer Friends
The writers I spoke with agree: Myriad options exist for how to organize a retreat that’s generative, meaningful, and fun; there’s no one way to do this. Are travel and…
Retreats Run by Writers, for Writers
While many writer-run retreats are fairly new, and their founders are still tinkering with the format, some like Dallagiacomo are plotting ways to turn them into lasting institutions. In the…