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: Kelcey Ervick
The first time I heard the term “graphic literature” was at a workshop while attending a local writing conference. A professor from Fresno led us through an exercise he often assigned to get his students’ creativity flowing. Using a…
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Interview: Sarah Fawn Montgomery
I have been a fan of Sarah Fawn Montgomery’s writing for a long time—first as a reader and a teacher, then as a writer drawn to formal innovation and passionate about Sarah Fawn’s subjects, then as an editor. Long…
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Conversations Between Friends: BettyJoyce Nash and Jody Hobbs Hesler
BettyJoyce Nash and Jody Hobbs Hesler are Charlottesville authors who teach at the community writing center, WriterHouse, and participate in writing groups together. Over the years, they have workshopped each other’s stories, served on panels together, and hiked in…
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Conversations Between Friends: Shannon Perri and Jennifer duBois
Jennifer duBois’s latest novel, The Last Language, published this month with Milkweed Editions, explores the ethically precarious choices of Angela, a promising linguist and young mother who’s lost everything: her husband, her second pregnancy, and her place in a…
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Interview: Laura Spence-Ash
In this new interview, Editor in Chief Courtney Harler corresponds with Laura Spence-Ash, author of one of this year’s most-anticipated debut novels, Beyond That, the Sea. Spence-Ash is also a former editor and cofounder of CRAFT, and we’re thrilled…
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Interview: Nancy Agabian
Set alternately in Yerevan, Armenia, and Queens, New York, Nancy Agabian’s novel The Fear of Large and Small Nations is a beautifully crafted interweaving of third-person storytelling with first-person metawriting and journaling. The main character is Na, a young…
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The Lonely Voice in Its Bathrobe: A Life of Letters
Excerpted from Late Work: A Literary Autobiography of Love, Loss, and What I Was Reading By Joan Frank • What is it, finally, about letters? Why does this old-fashioned form, even maimed and shrunken, volleyed mostly through ether…
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Interview: Chelsea Stickle
Acclaimed shortform author Chelsea Stickle has recently published two chapbooks: Breaking Points, which explores crucial moments in women’s lives through a variety of flash forms; and Everything’s Changing, which conjures images of transformation, both magical and otherwise. Chelsea took…
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Conversations Between Friends: Aaron Burch and Austin Ross
Aaron Burch and Austin Ross first became acquainted when Burch accepted one of Ross’s short stories at Hobart in 2018. Here, they discuss Ross’s debut novel, Gloria Patri, which deals with the aftermath of religious extremism and domestic terrorism.…
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Life, the Universe, and Everything: A Primer on the Writing of Autofiction
By Sarah Twombly • I am at work on a novel, and have been for more than a decade. It is autobiographical fiction, which is to say it’s about me, but also, it isn’t. The same way Einstein might…
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