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…
Over the phone, I urge my sister to recount the event of the morning, several years ago when we were kids and our mother was away in nursing school, that she, being the eldest, woke up early as usual…
Content Warning—suicidal ideation in a child Right after my forty-sixth birthday, I begin writing a novel. It’s about a mother who loses all sense of personal identity while taking care of her very ill son. A mother who…
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…
It was raining that day, and when Daisy came home early from work she found me not only in the sundress I’d bought in secret from the underground market at Sadang Station, but in her bra and a pair…
For Margaret Wise Brown In the great green room once known as The Earth, we stretched out in dry grass and stared up at the sky, arms akimbo behind our heads. Elbows for miles. There was a telephone, once…
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…
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…
CRAFT @ AWP24 in MCI Headed to Kansas City in February for AWP? Many friends of CRAFT will be presenting and participating. Be sure to add the events below to your calendar! Email contact@craftliterary.com with inquiries! PocketMFA, Partner Table #T1718…
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…
