On Trauma and the Book-Length Project
Jehanne Dubrow encourages writers to provide varied points of entry into books on trauma to give readers breathing room and keep them engaged.
Craft Capsules
In our weekly series of craft essays, some of the best and brightest minds in contemporary literature explore their craft in compact form, articulating their thoughts about creative obsessions and curiosities in a working notebook of lessons about the art of writing.
On Trauma and Taking Good Care
Author Jehanne Dubrow recommends rituals to help protect yourself when writing about trauma.
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On Trauma and Knowing When You’re Ready to Write
Jehanne Dubrow offers advice to writers wondering whether they are ready to process traumatic experience on the page.
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Next-Level Diversity: Beyond Faces and Names
The author of Spring, Summer, Asteroid, Bird (Norton, 2025) encourages writers to consider a deeper definition of diversity and embrace alternative storytelling styles and structures.
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Not All Stories Are Straight: Circular and Nested Structures From Asian Storytelling
The author of Spring, Summer, Asteroid, Bird (Norton, 2025) recommends writers embrace circuitous storytelling structures, typical of nonwestern literature.
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The Joy of Holding Back: The East Asian Four-Act Structure
The author of Spring, Summer, Asteroid, Bird (Norton, 2025) encourages writers to introduce a surprising element more than halfway into their storytelling structure.
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What Listening Has Taught Me: The Future Is Shaped by What We Remember
Oral historian Nyssa Chow considers the nested memories she belongs to, and invites readers to do the same.
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What Listening Has Taught Me: The Smallest Part of Your World
Oral historian Nyssa Chow considers how small routines and rituals tell larger stories.
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Writing About Family: The Kitchen Drawer
Writer and scholar Rebecca Rainof offers advice on writing about family by considering how “pockets of place can convey a larger sense of home.”
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Writing About Family: Lessons
Writer and scholar Rebecca Rainof offers advice on how to write about family by considering lessons learned over a lifetime.
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Writing About Family: Impossible Conversations
Writer and scholar Rebecca Rainof offers advice on how to write about family by imagining fictive dialogues.
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Revision Strategies: From Personal Narrative to Op-Ed
The author of Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America (Little A, 2021) offers advice on how to make a personal narrative resonate with the wider world.
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Revision Strategies: Endings
The author of Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America (Little A, 2021) offers advice on how to approach editing the endings of essays.
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Revision Strategies: Beginnings
The author of Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America (Little A, 2021) offers advice on how to approach editing the beginnings of books and essays.
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Lessons From Cinema: Writing Young Protagonists
The author of Amphibian (Ig Publishing, October 2024) considers what films can teach us about writing adolescent characters.
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Lessons From Cinema: Blurring the Line Between Magical Realism and Metaphor
The author of Amphibian (Ig Publishing, October 2024) applies lessons in magical realism and metaphor from film to fiction.
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Lessons From Cinema: How Scriptwriting Saved My Novel
The author of Amphibian (Ig Publishing, October 2024) contemplates how lessons in screenwriting can be applied to fiction.
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Submitting and Publishing Hybrid Work
The author of The Body Alone: A Lyrical Articulation of Chronic Pain offers advice on submitting and publishing hybrid work.
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Hybrid Writing and the Story Without an Ending
The author of The Body Alone: A Lyrical Articulation of Chronic Pain contemplates how hybrid writing can capture ongoing stories without neat endings.
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Hybrid Writing and the Nonlinear Story
The author of The Body Alone: A Lyrical Articulation of Chronic Pain contemplates how hybrid writing can capture the nonlinear chronology of pain.
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Embodied Writing: Breathe, Breathe, Breathe
The author of Us From Nothing offers an exercise to enhance the body’s role in the act of writing.
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Embodied Writing: Our Spider-Senses
The author of Us From Nothing offers an exercise to become mindful of the body’s role in the act of writing.
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Embodied Writing: One Body, Many Parts
The author of Us From Nothing revises his thinking about the role of the body in writing.
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Nonfiction as Writing Companion
The author of Freedom Is a Feast examines the inspirational power of real-life events.
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Desire, Physicality, Contradiction
The author of Freedom Is a Feast explores tactics for creating compelling, human, three-dimensional characters.
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