Alice Munro's Writerly Wisdom: Short Stories Aren't Small Stories
The Nobel Prize winner is a role model for writers looking to bridge the personal, domestic details of the short story with the global forces of history, author Kyle Minor says.
What Great Artists Need: Solitude
The lesson author Dorthe Nors took from Ingmar Bergman: It's not drugs, poverty, or wild lovers that make a great writer. It's discipline and time alone.
Why Marriage Is the Start of an 'Epic,' According to George Eliot
Rebecca Mead, New Yorker staff writer and author of My Life in Middlemarch, shares what Eliot's Middlemarch taught her about love, marriage, and journalism.
'Life Keeps Changing': Why Stories, Not Science, Explain the World
Author and journalist Jennifer Percy was a committed physics major until a Lawrence Sargent Hall story showed her a more satisfying way to approach life's complexities.
What It Really Means to Be 'Kafkaesque'
Author Ben Marcus says the beautiful but sorrowful strangeness of Kafka's "A Message from the Emperor" make it a perfect piece of writing.
'It Has to Come to You': Why Jim Harrison Writes Patiently
The veteran author says Theodore Roethke's poetry is a reminder that sometimes you're hot, sometimes you're not.
How to Write: A Year in Advice from Franzen, King, Hosseini, and More
Highlights from 12 months of interviews with writers about their craft and the authors they love
Amy Tan's Lonely, ‘Pixel-by-Pixel’ Writing Method
Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” helps remind the Joy Luck Club author to capture the “microscopic” details that make her characters unique.
How Aimee Bender Feels After Memorizing a Poem: 'Caffeinated'
Committing the words of Wallace Stevens to memory unlocked an emotional and physical magic within her, Bender says.
'You Begin to Breathe Again': Samuel Beckett's Humor as a Coping Mechanism
Author Paul Auster says Beckett shows how important laughter is in writing.
One Way to Keep Writing: 'Remember Death'
Russell Banks's biggest inspiration isn't another author—it's a gravestone inscription lurking near his desk.
The 'Stubborn Gladness' of Elizabeth Gilbert's Favorite Poet
The Eat, Pray, Love author celebrates the late Jack Gilbert, whose works challenge readers to find joy within suffering.
Should Literature Be Personal or Political?
Bob Shacochis confronts the tension between exploring the everyday "frivolity" of our private worlds and making broad statements about the one we share.
'Stephen King Saved My Life'
Young-adult novelist Robin Wasserman says the famous horror writer empowered her as a teen reader by capturing the uneasy teenage phase between childhood and adulthood.
The Poem That Made Sherman Alexie Want to 'Drop Everything and Be a Poet'
Alexie never thought he could leave his reservation to pursue a writing career—but a line written by Adrian C. Louis taught him to venture outside the "reservation of his mind."
The Case for Writing a Story Before Knowing How It Ends
Andre Dubus III, author of Dirty Love and The House of Sand and Fog, explains why the best work happens when you "back the fuck off."
Jonathan Franzen on the 19th-Century Writer Behind His Internet Skepticism
His new book translates works by Karl Kraus, whose misgivings toward progress mirror Franzen's belief that technology can be "very harmful" to artistic production.
'How Dare It Make Me Feel So Much': The Spell of F. Scott Fitzgerald
Author Ron Carlson was an unassuming, baseball-playing college student until a Fitzgerald story turned him into an impassioned English-major library vandal.
'Think About Characters Like a Sphere': How John Cheever Wrote Inner Turmoil
Novelist Paul Harding explains what Cheever's short story "The Jewels of the Cabots" taught him about portraying humans' contradictory impulses.
Two Tacos for A Moveable Feast: A Writer's Life-Changing Barter in Tijuana
In 1972, Daniel Woodrell traded part of his lunch for a copy of Ernest Hemingway's posthumous novel. After he read it, he became determined to be a writer.
‘All Immigrants Are Artists’
Edwidge Danticat, author of Claire of the Sea Light, believes that "re-creating your entire life is a form of reinvention on par with the greatest works of literature."
'This Did Something Powerful to Me': Authors' Favorite First Lines of Books
Jonathan Franzen, Margaret Atwood, David Gilbert, Roxane Gay, and other writers share their thoughts on what makes an inviting and memorable opening sentence.
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Why Stephen King Spends 'Months and Even Years' Writing Opening Sentences
The author of horror classics like The Shining and its 2013 sequel Doctor Sleep says the best writers hook their readers with voice, not just action.
Ira Glass's Favorite Part of David Rakoff's Last Writings
The radio host accompanied his friend and collaborator to a dance-company show five months before his death in 2012—and inspired a passage in Rakoff's newly published book.
The Humanist Message Hidden Amid the Violence of One Thousand and One Nights
Hanan al-Shaykh, author of The Story of Zahra and Beirut Blues, puts new emphasis on the lessons about compassion in Shahrazad's—or Scheherazade's—famous stories.
'You're a Parasite': The Stark Morals of James Agee's Great Depression Essay
Cotton Tenants, the long-lost magazine story that led to And Now Let Us Praise Famous Men, finally sees publication—at a time when its message seems more urgent than ever.
There's No Such Thing as Good Writing: Craig Nova's Radical Revising Process
The author of All the Dead Yale Men doesn't just tweak when he rewrites—he tries on entirely new points of view and genre styles to learn more about the story he's telling.
The Way Vivid, Way Underappreciated Short Stories of Mavis Gallant
Author Peter Orner pays tribute to of one of the past century's great character builders.
Marcus Aurelius's One Question to Beat Procrastination, Whining, and Struggle
Author Jessica Francis Kane explains how the Roman emperor's words about perseverance have helped her career.
Even Khaled Hosseini Can't Tell Stories as Effectively as He Wants To
The author of The Kite Runner and And the Mountains Echoed touts the introduction of Stephen King's "The Body" as a poignant encapsulation of an author's limitations.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road May Have the Scariest Passage in All of Literature
Benjamin Percy, author of Red Moon, makes the case.
When a Sentence Changes Your Life—Then Changes Its Own Meaning
Author Anthony Marra read new meaning into a line from Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son, years after that line had altered the way Marra thought about writing.
The Wendell Berry Sentence That Inspired Michael Pollan's Food Obsession
For Pollan, "eating is an agricultural act" offers more insight into how food relates to the world than Thoreau or Emerson's words ever could.
The Storytelling Lesson Contained in a Sentence About the Hindenburg
Fiona Maazel, the author of Woke Up Lonely and Last Last Chance, shares her favorite passage from her former teacher Jim Shepard.
'It Was to Know a Kind of Rage': V.S. Naipaul on the Cost of Learning History
Author Aatish Taseer, a chronicler of young Muslims, shares his favorite Naipaul passage.
The Hidden Poetic Genius of an Old, English Nursery Rhyme
Novelist Jim Crace, whose prose has been analyzed by mathematicians for its rhythm, learned his technique from the childhood counting game 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor.'
A Belated Apology to Anton Chekhov
Author Steven Barthelme shares how he came to appreciate 'Lady With Lapdog.'
'Joy & Woe Are Woven Fine': William Blake's Words for the Grieving
'Drinking With Men' author Rosie Schaap found this poem when she needed it most.
The Defiant, Optimistic Russian Poetry That Inspires Ayana Mathis
The 'Twelve Tribes of Hattie' author shares her thoughts on a 1937 work by Osip Mandelstam. Plus: a song!