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ANNOTATIONS, REVIEWS, and CRAFT BOOKS

Art of the Opening: What Is It Like to Be a Protagonist?

July 6, 2021

  How Alexander Weinstein establishes experiential reality right off the bat As much as we love being immersed in the expansive world of a novel, story collections have a notable advantage over novels: variety of characters, circumstances, themes and, crucially…

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Hybrid Interview: Kiare Ladner

June 22, 2021

  Essay by April Yee • How do we reconstruct a self that has been erased? Whether the erasure is the result of forces macro (a police state) or micro (an abusive parent), what remains is the need to fill…

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Writing the Complete Character: Frank Budgen on James Joyce

June 15, 2021

  By Mark David Kaufman • James Joyce once observed that he had included so many “enigmas and puzzles” in Ulysses that professors would be preoccupied with the book “for centuries”—an effective way, he added, of “insuring one’s immortality.” Such…

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Interview: Eric Nguyen

May 18, 2021

  Memories Have No Expiration Date Eric Nguyen’s Things We Lost to the Water ruminates on the constant disruptive sounds of waves regardless of which shore we land on, and on how the past echoes. “New Orleans is at war”…

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Hybrid Interview: Melissa Broder

May 11, 2021

  Essay by J. A Tyler • Milk Fed made me want to ingest a mountain of delicious, sugary, fatty foods—donuts, chips, pizza, candy—then sprint into the arms of some lusty entanglement. Yet the novel also gave me bouts of…

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Conversations Between Friends: Sadie Hoagland and John McNally

April 13, 2021

  SADIE HOAGLAND: John, I so enjoyed reading The Fear of Everything. Each story balances humor and darkness so well, and each piece held the sort of “good surprises” I love in fiction—the unexpected turns. I think one of my…

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Conversations Between Friends: Nancy Au and Olga Zilberbourg

March 30, 2021

  At the beginning of October, 2019, Nancy Au and Olga Zilberbourg celebrated the publication of their books Spider Love Song and Other Stories and Like Water and Other Stories. The E.M. Wolfman General Interest Small Bookstore of Oakland, CA,…

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Interview: Jo Ann Beard

March 16, 2021

  Jo Ann Beard’s third book, Festival Days, is a truehearted work of art. Nine pieces lean into life’s difficult decisions and the daunting beauty within moments of uncertainty. Her writing masters precision in language, emotional urgency, and grief’s complexities.…

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Interview: Lara Ehrlich

February 23, 2021

  The woman on the cover of Lara Ehrlich’s debut short story collection appears to be almost airlifted from the 1950s—she could be an actor from The Donna Reed Show or perhaps a model for LOOK magazine, all aproned and…

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Nonfiction Explosions: THE BEST OF BREVITY

February 16, 2021

  By Jacqueline Doyle • Flash fiction has gradually come to be recognized as an important literary form, though there are still writers who dismiss flash as a passing fad, less important than the short story. Often, they are the…

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