Category: Views

Reading The Lonely City without a Magic Bullet

By Melissa Wade I stare at the rain pouring down from the clogged gutters outside my window, realizing I have yet to talk to another human today. I asked my dog if he wanted to go for a walk, but it...

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How Do You Know When a Story is Done? How Veteran Writers Assess Their Work

By Kevin Binder The question “Am I done with this story?” is one that almost all writers will ask themselves at some point during their careers. In a previous blog post, we asked established...

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The World Behind the World: An Interview with Novelist Justin Cronin

By Melissa Wade Justin Cronin, writer of The Passage, no longer writes short fiction. He said the form is incompatible with his temperament. His successful trilogy, by way of proof, clocks in at over...

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How Long Does It Take to Write a Short Story? 7 Established Writers Weigh In

By Kevin Binder Writing fiction shares a strange quirk with playing chess. Unlike most endeavors, which people usually get faster at as they improve, writing and chess both seem to take longer as...

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A Review of “Blizzard” by Henri Cole

I’ve come to the conclusion I have a strange idea as to what the purpose of  “eco-poetics” is. While I originally saw it as any other poem, except that its aesthetics involve nature...

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Reading Cold Pastoral in Dystopian Times: An Interview with Poet Rebecca Dunham

In an era plagued by a global pandemic and a slew of environmental crises, Rebecca Dunham’s poetry collection Cold Pastoral (2017) poignantly captures the need to reflect on our responsibility to...

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A Review of “Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting” by Jonathan Maule

Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting Kevin Powers Little, Brown and Company, April 1, 2014 Reviewed by Jonathan Maule The Weight of What Remains: A Review of Kevin Powers’ Letter...

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A Review of “Meet Me Here at Dawn” by Anatoly Molotkov

Meet Me Here at Dawn by Sophie Klahr YesYes Books, December 1, 2016 ISBN: 978-1-936919-42-0 Reviewed by Anatoly Molotkov Sophie Klahr doesn’t offer much biographical information on her...

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Book Review: The Missing Girl by Jacqueline Doyle

The Missing Girl Jacqueline Doyle Black Lawrence Press, 2017 ISBN: 978-1-62557-983-6 When it comes to narratives on missing and abducted girls, we normally explore titillating, abhorrent, and violent...

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Book Review: The Brand New Catastrophe

The Brand New Catastrophe Mike Scalise Sarabande Books, 2017 260 pp.   The writer who chooses memoir as a medium faces a daunting challenge: to ground himself in the personal—in a specific,...

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