By David Saltzman • As students of fiction, we’re often taught that in crafting a story, the writer should rigidly mete out information, ensuring that a reader is always, without exception, situated as to speaker, scene, and story. When…
The approach is by boat—the passage is narrow. Our steamer slipped through the still, dark water. Us passengers, bewitched, red-eyed and scorch-lunged refugees from the burning south, reached out to touch the icy granite, scraped clean as a birth…
By Candace Walsh • In Jess Walter’s “Famous Actor” and Carmen Maria Machado’s “The Husband Stitch,” the authors use intertextuality as a structural element: a rhythmic, outside-of-time interruption of the chronological main story. Simultaneously, each of the female narrators…
For the 2019 Best of the Net This anthology promotes the diverse and ever-growing collection of voices who are publishing their work online and serves to bring greater respect to an innovative and continually expanding medium. “Ricochet” by Paul…
Our monthly roundup of new fiction is here, with more collections than novels! And don’t miss the bonus round of new fall books by CRAFT contributors… André Aciman, Find Me “Elio is the heart of the novel, as its…
“You’re a spring now,” says Hee-Bon, wintering Soo-Na’s complexion with a chilly setting powder. “Pink undertones, freckles—lot of sun in you. And I love your hair. Mom’s going to hate it. Why’d you dye it so bright?” Because her…
By Gabriel Brownstein • For years, I’ve assigned Joan Didion’s essay “Why I Write” to my fiction writing workshops. For me, as a short story writer, there are two crucial sentences in the essay. Didion precedes these sentences with…
The heron stands on wet sand and picks at a still-live crab. It drags it through the surf, shakes it under water. It tosses the shell into the air and catches it in the middle of its waxy jaws.…
By Paul Crenshaw • As an undergraduate I wrote a lot of autobiographical fiction in which narrators from small Southern towns attempted to escape the confines of their region, all the conservative culture and Christianity that wrapped around them…
We’re so excited about all the books coming out this season from CRAFT contributors, we decided to do a new books bonus round to cover them! We’ve even got nonfiction to share! A click on any of the titles will…
