CRAFT
On Crafting the Memoir in Pieces
By Beth Kephart • The writer of the memoir in pieces is an assembly artist—a hunter, a gatherer, an arranger, a culler, a keeper. They are not at work on a collection of essays loosely bound by voice, style,…
Read MoreHybrid Interview: Tommi Parrish
Essay by Erin Vachon • The opening panel of Tommi Parrish’s brilliant graphic novel Men I Trust—out now from Fantagraphics—centers a clothesline, laundry drying in spare daylight. Parrish populates the world with bodies soon enough. Eliza is a single…
Read MoreInherited Language
By Nick Almeida • If you had grown up in my house, “You’re dollaring me to death” would forever echo in your head. The phrase is one of my mother’s favorites, inextricably linked to any requests for small amounts…
Read MoreHybrid Interview: Priyanka Kumar
Essay by A. D. Carr • “Sometimes it just takes the right bird to awaken us.” —Priyanka Kumar I didn’t start to have an interest in birds until my midthirties. No doubt this shift coincides with the transition from…
Read MoreBelt Buckles and Sad Songs: Manifesting the Past in Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain”
By Daniel Abiva Hunt • When I first began writing seriously, I was obsessed with character histories. Nothing would make my character feel more real and fully formed than a detail-oriented past, I felt, and I would turn over…
Read MoreInterview: 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…
Read MoreInterview: 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…
Read MoreInterview: 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…
Read MoreInterview: 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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