CRAFT
Conversations Between Friends: Gale Massey and Louise Marburg
Gale Massey and Louise Marburg met in 2016 at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference over a tarot card consultation. Discovering a shared interest in exploring the dark side of human nature, they immediately clicked and have been friends and writing…
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Never Rush a Rabbit: Prey Animals & Choices in Fiction
By Lee Upton • Probably like many writers I’m protective toward my characters—even though I put them in impossible situations or give them unfulfillable longings. I pretty much pickle them in vulnerability. Sometimes I let them avoid any action…
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Hybrid Interview: Rebecca Kuder
Essay by Jahzerah Brooks • The Eight Mile Suspended Carnival is, at its core, a story about tearing down and building up. In this debut novel set against the backdrop of a working carnival and a wartime munitions factory,…
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Hauntings of the Past, Hauntings of the Future: Crafting Dreams in Fiction
By Audrey T. Carroll • Dreams have woven their way into fiction from The Iliad to The Lord of the Rings and beyond. They can, of course, serve all kinds of purposes—deepening understanding of a character’s fears, desires, or…
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Conversations Between Friends: Thea Prieto and Peg Alford Pursell
Thea Prieto and Peg Alford Pursell first became acquainted when Pursell submitted her hybrid flash writing to The Gravity of the Thing, a literary journal edited by Prieto, and over the years their conversations on writing have grown to…
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Gurov’s Watermelon: Prop Work as Character Work in Anton Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Pet Dog”
By Patrick Thomas Henry • Wherever I write, I stow props: photographs and notebooks, found objects, mementoes of life away from the page. Despite my effort to shake off the strictures of my own workshop experiences, I still believe…
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Hybrid Interview: Ira Sukrungruang
Essay by Sam Risak • Author of a combined six books of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, Richard L. Thomas Professor of Creative Writing at Kenyon College, and president of the literary nonprofit Sweet: A Literary Confection, Ira Sukrungruang…
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The Semantics of Belonging: Asian American Identity and Cost of the American Dream in Ling Ma’s SEVERANCE
By Khushi Daryani • “Only in America do you have the luxury of being depressed,” claims Ruifang from Ling Ma’s Severance (Ma, 226). A recently resurfaced novel due to its uncanny similarity to the global pandemic, it contains several…
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“Keeping to Eat”: Nourishment for the Literary Mind, Winter 2021
In Montréal, the newlyweds delay the satisfaction of my hunger. The duo drifts forward down Rue Saint-Sulpice, not more than one hundred steps outside the Notre-Dame Basilica with its archways and neon blues and vaulted ceilings tumbling with 24-karat…
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Art of the Opening: Tyler Barton
From a distance, you can see the lights. The air is mosquito-thick, damp. The usually desolate backroads of Butler County, PA have become a caravan of motor enthusiasts. From the grassy shoulder, a deer struts with meticulous posture as…
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