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: Sarah Blake
In Sarah Blake’s sophomore novel, Clean Air, the cause of the climate apocalypse comes as a surprise. It’s not rising oceans or wildfires or air pollution. The trees release enough pollen to suffocate humankind: a drawn-out, mass-casualty event known…
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Interview: Nicole McCarthy
All spaces are haunted. In a way, all spaces are about memory. In A Summoning, “a conceptual, psychological experiment focused on memory,” Nicole McCarthy invites readers to sit and feel and think and remember. Throughout this fragmented collection, McCarthy…
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Conversations Between Friends: Grant Faulkner and Meg Pokrass
CRAFT is delighted to share a triptych of humorous microfictions by Grant Faulkner, previously included in Best Microfiction 2022. The following pieces take on the subject matter of craft and critical essays from the perspectives of three fictional individuals,…
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Interview: Brittany Ackerman
I found Brittany Ackerman’s piece “Mia’s Birthday” in Forever Magazine in the summer of 2021, in the midst of an intolerably painful breakup for which I was wholly to blame. Asked to write an introduction for our conversation, I…
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Interview: Maisy Card
CRAFT is ever grateful to award-winning debut novelist Maisy Card, who served as this year’s guest judge for our 2022 First Chapters Contest. Maisy has chosen the three winning excerpts, which will be featured this month, starting tomorrow. To…
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Interview: Ingrid Rojas Contreras
CRAFT is thrilled to welcome Ingrid Rojas Contreras as guest judge for our 2022 Creative Nonfiction Award. Rojas Contreras was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. Hailed as “original, politically daring, and passionately written” by Vogue, her first novel, Fruit of…
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Crafting Endings in Short Fiction
By Jennifer Murvin • There are two quotations I often turn to when thinking about ending a short story; the first comes from Flannery O’Connor, in her essay, “On Her Own Work,” which reads, “I often ask myself what makes…
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Hybrid Interview: Claire Oshetsky
Essay by Cavar Sarah • I have never understood the fear of birds. “Because they are so far from us,” I am told by well-meaning humans. “Because we lack ways to tell what they are feeling.” I try to…
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Interview: Amelia Gray
The editors at CRAFT are thrilled to welcome Amelia Gray as the guest judge of our 2022 Amelia Gray 2K Contest, which is open to microfiction, flash fiction, and prose poetry pieces under two thousand words. Gray is a…
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Conversations Between Friends: Sadaf Ferdowsi and Sarah Fay
In the winter of 2014, Sadaf Ferdowsi took a creative nonfiction class taught by Dr. Sarah Fay. A longtime contributor at The Paris Review, Fay taught her the interview form while instilling a healthy suspicion on the limits of…
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