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.
Interview: Hanna Pylväinen
In celebration of the inaugural Novelette Print Prize, Editor in Chief Courtney Harler corresponded via email with Guest Judge Hanna Pylväinen, author of The End of Drum-Time. In the resulting interview below, they discuss choosing point of view, honoring…
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Interview: Janet Goldberg
At her Berkeley kitchen table, Janet Goldberg runs her finger over mapped roads in the Sierras that lead to a region she has hiked for decades, terrain that forms the backdrop of her debut novel, The Proprietor’s Song. The…
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Conversations Between Friends: Kate Brody and Nishita Parekh
Kate Brody and Nishita Parekh are debut authors who met on Instagram. They both released their first thrillers in January 2024 and have crossed paths in virtual events like the Penguin Random House Debut Mystery Panel. In the months…
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Her Own Elephant Outright
By Joseph Young • Writers are often told, whether by their instructors or about the internet in general, that in their finished stories, there should be no wasted words, no extraneous sentences, no details or lines of dialogue, that…
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Hybrid Interview: Leslie Jamison
Essay by Yvonne Conza • In Splinters, Leslie Jamison exposes a live nerve that makes vivid connections between emotions of motherhood, marriage, artistry, and selfhood. Alive and strengthened within this endeavor is Jamison’s iconic, singular awareness, that like her…
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Conversations Between Friends: Miki Pfeffer and Teresa Tumminello Brader
Miki Pfeffer and Teresa Tumminello Brader became friends after meeting in 2007 during a literary discussion program at a New Orleans-area library. They met over books, and books continue to bind them. Since their first meeting, Pfeffer has authored…
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Interview: Susan Kiyo Ito
I first met Susan Kiyo Ito over Twitter, where she is an active and popular voice in both the adoptee and writing communities. As an author who writes about my experience as a half-Korean adoptee, I found Susan to…
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Insinuating Life: Diction and Syntax in the Short Story
By Rose Smith • Here’s something I am curious about: when is a well-placed flourish, maybe even a flurry of adjectives and adverbs, perfect for a story, and when are the simplest of sentences called for? Two stories came…
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Interview: Nick Fuller Googins
Nick Fuller Googins is the author of the novel The Great Transition. His short fiction and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, Men’s Health, The Sun, The Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. He lives in Maine and works…
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Beyond Binary Thinking: Writing Cruelty Without Inflicting Harm
By Claire Polders • Kinship I’m married to an American, have visited the United States in the past two decades on at least two dozen occasions, and have spent time in seven different states, but the rural and rather…
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