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In this CBS Boston interview, R. F. Kuang talks about her latest novel, Katabasis (Harper Voyager, 2025), and its forthcoming television series adaptation, her connection to Sylvia Plath and the city of Boston, and the importance of buying from independent bookstores.
As reported in a recent piece in Smithsonian magazine written by Erin Donaghue, there is a small residential neighborhood in northwestern New York State with a population of about 300 inhabitants of which about forty are psychic mediums. Every summer, thousands flock to the hamlet of Lily Dale to engage in the practices of spiritualism, a philosophy and religion that believes that the living can communicate with the dead. This week write a short story in which one of your characters encounters a medium and attempts to establish a connection with someone in their life who has died. You might choose to include multiple voices or perspectives, or imbue your narrative with a tone of mystery, horror, tragedy, or comedy. Are the medium’s capabilities genuine or fraudulent, or perhaps somewhere in-between? What is revealed about your protagonist’s relationship with the person they’re trying to contact?
“I knew I was going to write about tech, but I did think of it first as a novel about labor.” Elaine Castillo talks about exploring the intersection of virtual reality and the Filipino American diaspora for her second novel, Moderation (Viking, 2025), and how Jane Austen’s novels, including Pride and Prejudice, informed her process in this episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast hosted by Miwa Messer.
“I try to write every day, whether that’s generating new words or taking a walk to think about a revision problem.” —E. Y. Zhao, author of Underspin
“Books became my friends, my companions, from an early age.” In this Louisiana Channel interview, novelist Elif Shafak talks about the universality of storytelling and how literature revealed other worlds to her from a young age.
In this 2024 Bangalore Literature Festival event, Kiran Desai reads from her third novel, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny (Hogarth, 2025), which she describes as “an epic, unresolved love story,” and speaks about the nearly twenty-year process of writing the book with Arunava Sinha. A profile of Desai by Renée H. Shea appears in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
If practice makes perfect, what do we do with the imperfections of being out of practice? This week write a short story that revolves around a character who finds themselves unexpectedly back in the mode of performing a skill they once did well, but have now grown rusty after years of unuse. It might be a creative practice—playing an instrument, dancing, photography, writing, or painting—or perhaps it’s a job-related task—writing a report, managing a team, or speaking in front of a large audience. Consider anything learned that one might fall out of practice with, such as a language, camping, or even dating. How does your character adjust to revisiting an old skill? Does everything come flooding back or is there a steep learning curve?
In this Writers on Writing event at the Newberry Library in Chicago, authors Carmen Maria Machado and Megan Stielstra engage in a conversation about their creative processes, the evolution of their works, and their insights into the art of storytelling.
In her 1955 book The Edge of the Sea, marine biologist Rachel Carson explores the ecology of the Atlantic seashore. “When we go down to the low-tide line, we enter a world that is as old as the earth itself,” she writes, “the primeval meeting place of the elements of earth and water, a place of compromise and conflict and eternal change.” Write a short story that uses a shoreline as its setting. Consider the ways in which this meeting place of earth and water is a place where one might encounter change, conflict, and compromise. What sorts of sights specific to this merging of earth and water are observed, and how can you connect them to the major and minor conflicts in your narrative? Does your story conclude with the implication of further “eternal change,” or do you lead your characters to a seeming point of resolution?
In this interview from The Tamron Hall Show, the best-selling author of the romance novels Beach Read (Berkley, 2020), Book Lovers (Berkley, 2022), and Great Big Beautiful Life (Berkley, 2025) talks about her writing process, approaches to character development, and exploration of themes, such as love, loss, and self-discovery.
