-
![]()
Doug McLean George Saunders on Chekhov's Different Visions of Happiness
The Lincoln in the Bardo author dissects the Russian writer’s masterful meditations on beauty and sorrow in the short story “Gooseberries,” and explains the importance of questioning your stance while writing.
-
![]()
Doug McLean The Key to Writing a Mystery Is Asking the Perfect Question
The veteran author John Rechy discusses the powerful enigma of William Faulkner and the beauty of the unsolved narrative.
-
![]()
Doug McLean Finding Meaning in Going Nowhere
Ottessa Moshfegh, the author of the novel Eileen, opens up about coping with depression, how writing saved her life, and finding solace in an overlooked song.
-
![]()
Doug McLean Opening Paragraphs Don’t Always Have to Be Exciting
The author Emily Ruskovich discusses the uncanny restraint of Alice Munro and the art of starting a short story.
-
![]()
Zak Bickel / Katie Martin / Paul Spella ... The Best Writing Advice of 2016
Highlights from 12 months of interviews with writers about their craft and the authors they love
-
![]()
Doug McLean Making Art at the Painful Margins
What the violent suffering in Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot taught the author Laurie Sheck about finding inspiration in torment and illness
-
![]()
Doug McLean Writing With Infinite Pity
The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon discusses what he learned about empathy from Borges’s “The Aleph.”
-
![]()
Doug McLean When Novels Frustrate, and Enthrall
Franz Kafka’s work taught the writer Jonathan Lethem about how to incorporate chaos into narratives.
-
![]()
Doug McLean Writing for an Audience of One
The novelist Nell Zink discusses the psalm that inspired her, and what she learned about the solitary artistic process from her Catholic upbringing.
-
![]()
Doug McLean Emily Dickinson’s Mysterious ‘You’
The poem “Wild Nights! - Wild Nights!” taught the novelist Emma Donoghue about sexuality, ambiguity, and intimacy.
-
![]()
Characters Don't Change, but Readers Do
The novelist and poet Alice Mattison discusses finding inspiration in the unconventional short stories of Grace Paley.
-
![]()
Doug McLean Art Should Be Uncomfortable
For the writer Mark Haddon, Miles Davis’s seminal jazz album Bitches Brew is a reminder of the beauty and power of challenging works.
-
![]()
Doug McLean The Lorax and Literature’s Moral Obligation
Despite critics’ dismissal of activist-minded fiction, the author Lydia Millet believes that Dr. Seuss’s classic children’s book is powerful because of its message, not in spite of it.
-
![]()
Doug McLean To Write, Stop Thinking
The writer Kathryn Harrison believes that words flow best when the opaque, unknowable aspects of the mind take over.
-
![]()
Doug McLean The Deeper Truth of Fiction
Dostoyevsky taught the writer Charles Bock that inventive writing is the most effective way to conjure reality.
-
![]()
Doug McLean When Art Is an Act of Survival
Melissa Broder of So Sad Today finds solace in Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death and in her own creative process.
-
![]()
Doug McLean Can Writing Be Both True and Beautiful?
The author Ethan Canin probes the depths of a single sentence in Saul Bellow’s short story “A Silver Dish.”
-
![]()
Doug McLean Good People Don't Make Good Characters
Philip Roth taught the author Tony Tulathimutte that writers should aim to show all aspects of their subjects—not only the morally upstanding side.
-
![]()
Doug McLean Alexander Chee on What Writing Parties Reveals About Characters
The author of The Queen of the Night describes how a scene by Charlotte Bronte showed him the dramatic stakes of social interaction in fiction.
-
![]()
Doug McLean The Promise of Flawed Characters
The author Paul Lisicky describes how Flannery O’Connor pulls her subjects apart to make them stronger.
