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.
Insinuating Life: Diction and Syntax in the Short Story
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…
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Interview: Nick Fuller Googins
Nick Fuller Googins is the author of the novel The Great Transition. His short fiction and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, Men’s Health, The Sun, The Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. He lives in Maine and works…
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Beyond Binary Thinking: Writing Cruelty Without Inflicting Harm
By Claire Polders • Kinship I’m married to an American, have visited the United States in the past two decades on at least two dozen occasions, and have spent time in seven different states, but the rural and rather…
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Interview: Kelcey Ervick
The first time I heard the term “graphic literature” was at a workshop while attending a local writing conference. A professor from Fresno led us through an exercise he often assigned to get his students’ creativity flowing. Using a…
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Interview: Sarah Fawn Montgomery
I have been a fan of Sarah Fawn Montgomery’s writing for a long time—first as a reader and a teacher, then as a writer drawn to formal innovation and passionate about Sarah Fawn’s subjects, then as an editor. Long…
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Conversations Between Friends: BettyJoyce Nash and Jody Hobbs Hesler
BettyJoyce Nash and Jody Hobbs Hesler are Charlottesville authors who teach at the community writing center, WriterHouse, and participate in writing groups together. Over the years, they have workshopped each other’s stories, served on panels together, and hiked in…
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Conversations Between Friends: Shannon Perri and Jennifer duBois
Jennifer duBois’s latest novel, The Last Language, published this month with Milkweed Editions, explores the ethically precarious choices of Angela, a promising linguist and young mother who’s lost everything: her husband, her second pregnancy, and her place in a…
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Interview: Laura Spence-Ash
In this new interview, Editor in Chief Courtney Harler corresponds with Laura Spence-Ash, author of one of this year’s most-anticipated debut novels, Beyond That, the Sea. Spence-Ash is also a former editor and cofounder of CRAFT, and we’re thrilled…
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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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