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, 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: Robert Lopez
Robert Lopez’s fiction delves deep into those devastating moments which bring into question how it is we survive this strange, oftentimes volatile, experiment we call life. His characters are real people with real problems, many of them confused as…
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Classics in the Maze: Michael Ende’s THE MIRROR IN THE MIRROR: A LABYRINTH
utque ope virginea nullis iterata priorum ianua difficilis filo est inuenta relecto —Ovid, Metamorphoses Das stammt alles aus anderen Zeiten. —Michael Ende, Der Spiegel im Spiegel. Ein Labyrinth Essay by Tamara Beneyto • Writer Michael Ende is mainly…
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On (Not) Tracking Movement
By Mike Goodwin • Part I: In Action On its own, readers see a sentence like the opening of Raymond Carver’s “The Bath” which reads, “Saturday afternoon the mother drove to the bakery in the shopping center,” and react…
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Hybrid Interview: Matt Bell
Essay by Jesse Motte • Matt Bell’s new novel, Appleseed, explores the climate-disaster subgenre through an interlocking system of storytelling whereby myth, legend, and Bell’s own originality converge. The novel follows three characters as they navigate the spaces between…
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Flesh and Blood Ideas in J.M. Coetzee’s ELIZABETH COSTELLO
By Maggie Kast • When I’ve given a character my own thoughts on a subject close to my heart, I’ve heard critiques of my writing like, “Sounds authorial,” or, “Your character wouldn’t say that—those are your ideas.” Explication by…
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The Second Iceberg Theory
By Matthew Duffus • Every fiction writer I know is familiar with Ernest Hemingway’s “Iceberg Theory,” explained most succinctly in Death in the Afternoon, his nonfiction book on bullfighting: “If a writer of prose knows enough about what he…
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Hybrid Interview: Tyler Gillespie
Essay by Sam Risak • “Florida man arrested for calling 911 after kitten denied entry into strip club.” “Florida man once arrested for fighting drag queen with tiki torch runs for mayor.” “Florida man killed by alligator while hiding…
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Art of the Opening: What Is It Like to Be a Protagonist?
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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A Jump to the Left, and Then a Step to the Right: Lateral Lyric Moves
By Heidi Czerwiec • I come late to creative nonfiction, after decades of writing and training and teaching and researching as a poet. While I feel I’m still playing catch-up with the standards of nonfiction craft, what I bring…
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Hybrid Interview: Kiare Ladner
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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