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, book reviews and annotations, 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: Nancy Agabian
Set alternately in Yerevan, Armenia, and Queens, New York, Nancy Agabian’s novel The Fear of Large and Small Nations is a beautifully crafted interweaving of third-person storytelling with first-person metawriting and journaling. The main character is Na, a young…
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The Lonely Voice in Its Bathrobe: A Life of Letters
Excerpted from Late Work: A Literary Autobiography of Love, Loss, and What I Was Reading By Joan Frank • What is it, finally, about letters? Why does this old-fashioned form, even maimed and shrunken, volleyed mostly through ether…
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Interview: Chelsea Stickle
Acclaimed shortform author Chelsea Stickle has recently published two chapbooks: Breaking Points, which explores crucial moments in women’s lives through a variety of flash forms; and Everything’s Changing, which conjures images of transformation, both magical and otherwise. Chelsea took…
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Conversations Between Friends: Aaron Burch and Austin Ross
Aaron Burch and Austin Ross first became acquainted when Burch accepted one of Ross’s short stories at Hobart in 2018. Here, they discuss Ross’s debut novel, Gloria Patri, which deals with the aftermath of religious extremism and domestic terrorism.…
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Life, the Universe, and Everything: A Primer on the Writing of Autofiction
By Sarah Twombly • I am at work on a novel, and have been for more than a decade. It is autobiographical fiction, which is to say it’s about me, but also, it isn’t. The same way Einstein might…
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Interview: Brad Listi
I’ve been listening to Brad Listi’s Otherppl podcast for years, very used to his voice and candor, but I didn’t pick up his fiction until he flipped the script and sat as a guest on his own show. In…
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Conversations Between Friends: Tara Lynn Masih, Stacy D. Flood, and Kim Chinquee
Wheels, puzzles, the art of Zen—how do these seemingly unrelated topics pertain to the craft of condensing prose? Three authors and friends who bonded over their love of writing “short” explore how writers can fine-tune their flash or novella…
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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,…
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Hybrid 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…
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Inherited 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…
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