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.
What’s in a Name? Only Everything
By Aaron Hamburger • One of the most vexing tasks fiction writers face is naming their characters. Over the years, I’ve heard of writers searching for names in baby books, phone books (back when people had phone books), and…
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A Closer Look: MEANDER, SPIRAL, EXPLODE
I hope…that thinking about patterns other than the arc will become natural, that evolving writers won’t feel oppressed by the arc, that they’ll imagine visual aspects of narrative as well as temporal, that they’ll discover ways to design, being…
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Joke-Telling in Lorrie Moore’s “You’re Ugly, Too”
By Kate Kaplan • People tell jokes to attract attention or deflect it, to express a point of view, to connect, to offend, or in the hope of shared laughter. Some people (disclosure: me) tell jokes to themselves, rehearsing…
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The Ears and Noses of Beholders in THE PRICE OF SALT
By Candace Walsh • As thousands of tweets and several articles attest, women have grown weary of the way many male writers describe female characters: zooming in on their body parts with a Porky’s-gaze, to the exclusion of describing…
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CRAFT Fiction by the Elements
Here’s a roundup of CRAFT short and flash fiction pieces that each exemplify a certain element. Don’t forget the Author’s Note that accompanies each piece, in which the writer considers an aspect of craft in their story. Character Check out…
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The Queer Gaze and the Ineffable in THE PRICE OF SALT
By Candace Walsh • I almost didn’t read Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt, one of the most influential, relevant, and exquisite novels I’ve ever encountered. Why? I felt like it would be dated. I thought that I should…
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How to Link Up a Short Story Collection: A Fairy Tale
By Micah Perks • A reader recently emailed me about my new collection of linked short stories, True Love and Other Dreams of Miraculous Escape: she appreciated “all the tiny details, like breadcrumbs that you sprinkled along the way. Reading…
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It Happened Here: Setting in Natashia Deón’s GRACE
By Melissa Benton Barker • Natashia Deón’s novel, Grace, is a both a warcry against and a lament upon the violence inflicted on the Black female body under the conditions of slavery in the United States. The novel is narrated…
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Free Indirect Speech
By Laura Nicoara • So she would still find herself arguing in St. James’s Park, still making out that she had been right—and she had too—not to marry him. For in marriage a little licence [sic], a little independence there…
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The Art of Time in David Gates’s “Banishment”
By Amber Wheeler Bacon • David Gates doesn’t recommend flashbacks to new writers when he’s teaching fiction. When line editing a student’s piece, he cuts pretty much every flashback he sees. I know because he cut plenty of mine when…
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