By M. Beth Zimmer • “What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?” Henry James, The Art of Fiction During the first month of my first semester as an MFA student,…
By Evan Calbi • I’m drawn to characters who don’t easily express themselves. If they won’t share how they’re feeling, their emotions often manifest in behavior that can set a story in motion. But how do you reveal an…
Rajesh considers himself a man of few exceptions, for he was raised as such. His morning routine requires a piping-hot filter coffee with boiled milk, served in a steel cup inside of a rimmed steel saucer. He then pours…
Common descriptors from readers of working-class literature tend to devolve into one of two fields. The first, with words like “gruff,” “gritty,” and “crass,” tend to simply describe the economically depressed settings and the hardscrabble lives of the characters…
By Jen Craven • Here’s a truth many writers (myself included) sometimes resist: if your characters aren’t suffering, your story probably is. In the world of suspense fiction, suffering isn’t just dramatic flair—it’s fuel. It’s what cranks the tension,…
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.…
In The Witch Hare, a witch’s familiar—a curious young hare—goes on a globe-hopping journey to help her sad companion learn to live life to the fullest again. As the hare ventures out to seek adventure, she shows the witch…
We shall leave, for remembrance, one rusty iron heart. The city’s rusty heart, that holds both the hustler and the square. Takes them both and holds them there. For keeps and a single day. —Nelson Algren, Chicago: City on…
There’s an air-raid shelter in the backyard. It was built in the fifties, back when such things were fashionable, back when, if your neighbors didn’t have one, you made it clear to them that at the sight of that…
By Melissa Benton Barker • The stories in Mary Gaitskill’s collection Don’t Cry are like tiny mirrors held close, all the pores and blemishes of her characters offered up for the readers’ inspection. Published in 2009, the collection scrupulously…
