THE CLASSROOM CORNER
We often hear from creative writing instructors that they find CRAFT to be very useful in the classroom. We listened, and we've made this corner as a quick resource, a curated list of some of our favorites. This list is NOT exhaustive—our pages are full of short fiction, flash fiction, creative nonfiction, critical essays, interviews, roundups of all things literary, and more. This is a handy place to start!
We will continually update this list, so check back when making those syllabi, and for quick inspiration anytime.
An Analysis of the Narrative Voice in Yoko Ogawa’s THE DIVING POOL
By Geoffrey Miller • A different woman character narrates each of the trio of novellas in Yoko Ogawa’s collection The Diving Pool. In the opening, titular piece there’s Aya, a school-aged girl living at a countryside orphanage run by…
Read MoreInterview: Joe Sacksteder
Joe Sacksteder debuted twice last year: with his first full-length story collection Make/Shift in April, and his first novel Driftless Quintet in November. Between the two, he showcases a number of forms and a blend of genres. Flip through…
Read MoreRevise Like a Scientist: A Method Approach to Finding the Right Treatment for Your Story
By Lynne Griffin • “My pencils outlast my erasers.” —Vladimir Nabokov “I’m all for the scissors. I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.” —Truman Capote There’s consensus among writers that writing is…
Read MoreThis or That: Simultaneity in John O’Hara’s BUTTERFIELD 8
By Ian Randall Wilson • When I wrote in third person, it was in third-person close. The concerns of simultaneity didn’t occupy much of my attention. There may be a flaw in my thinking here, but my reasoning was…
Read MoreThe Grind: Revelatory Repetition in Edward P. Jones’s “An Orange Line Train to Ballston”
By Alyson Mosquera Dutemple • In the very first line of his story “An Orange Line Train to Ballston,” Edward P. Jones signals to readers to expect repetition and recurrence throughout the rest of the piece: “The first time…
Read MoreOn (Not) Writing the Bar Story Part II: The Instructor
By Mike Goodwin • In my brief career teaching fiction workshops, the bar story has appeared too often as a genre vying for literariness. Students have written about debauchery at house parties, barns, parks, cemeteries, and, of course, bars.…
Read MoreOn (Not) Writing the Bar Story Part I: The Amateur Writer
By Mike Goodwin • I once earned a well-deserved reaming for my writing an awful story involving who I viewed as lower-class patrons inhabiting a dive bar. The narrative too often emphasized these characters giving each other the business…
Read MoreHybrid Interview: Gayle Brandeis
“We want you to know how we lived. That we lived. That we were girls before we were game. That we were alive.” Essay by Melissa Benton Barker • Gayle Brandeis’s recent novel-in-verse, Many Restless Concerns (a testimony):…
Read MoreArt of the Opening: Raymond Carver and Crafting a Hook
I am heaving in the southwestern corner of an open-air outlet mall five days before Christmas. This is the desperate and empty sort of heaving required to stop a sob and close off the valve of emotion. A hiccuping…
Read MoreEmpathy as Craft: James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues”
By Gerry Stanek • James Baldwin finds a unique way to interiority in “Sonny’s Blues,” which was first published in 1957. I say unique, because I’m not sure there’s another story like this; a character’s thoughts and perceptions are…
Read More