CRAFT ESSAYS, ELEMENTS, and TALKS
Crafting Endings in Short Fiction
By Jennifer Murvin • There are two quotations I often turn to when thinking about ending a short story; the first comes from Flannery O’Connor, in her essay, “On Her Own Work,” which reads, “I often ask myself what makes…
Hybrid Interview: Claire Oshetsky
Essay by Cavar Sarah • I have never understood the fear of birds. “Because they are so far from us,” I am told by well-meaning humans. “Because we lack ways to tell what they are feeling.” I try to…
Wisdom and Wisdom Teeth: Against Relatability
“The human life is individual; it is not unique.” —Bee Yang, via Kao Kalia Yang “There are two types of people in the world: them who have and them who will.” —Dad By Karen Babine • Over the years,…
Hybrid Interview: Roisin Kiberd
Essay by Tyler Barton • Someone recently asked me why I set many short stories in the aughts. It’s true that I have a fascination with those years because they were my formative ones, ones in which I was not…
Against Twists
By Vera Kurian • How I wish I could go back and watch The Sixth Sense for the first time again, because when I first saw it, someone had already revealed the twist to me. In retrospect, it was…
Hybrid Interview: Cara Blue Adams
Essay by Sam Dilling • Cara Blue Adams’s debut short story collection, You Never Get It Back, is a nuanced portrait of love, loss, and longing. The stories follow the life of Kate Bishop, the central character, from childhood,…
Art of the Opening: Microcosm to Macrocosm
How “The Ghost Birds” Spreads Its Wings after Taking the Leap By Albert Liau • How does a story begin to enchant us? When speaking with First Draft host Mitzi Rapkin, Richard Powers seems to suggest an answer: “You…
In the Expanded Field: The Lyric Essay & Genre Queerness
By Katy Scarlett • In 1979, Rosalind Krauss published her now-famous essay “Sculpture in the Expanded Field,” which explored how new forms of three-dimensional art-making borrowed from sculpture, monument, architecture, interior and landscape design. She writes, “as the 1960s began…
Hybrid Interview: Sara Lippmann
Essay by Michelle Ross • Since the first time I read a Sara Lippmann story, I’ve been smitten. Among the inventory of qualities I admire is her wit, her raw honesty, her faith in her readers’ ability to keep…
Radical Empathy via Free Indirect Speech: Luis Alberto Urrea’s “Mountains Without Number”
By Anne Elliott • One of the noble aims of fiction is the fostering of empathy across difference, including difference of beliefs. Most difficult for me is finding empathy for those with unpalatable beliefs. Softening my gaze puts my…