by Laura Pritchett
Who was writing about sex in long-term, middle-aged relationships, and how did that go? I sought out the bravest-of-the-brave scenes, the ones that made even a stalwart reader feel surprise. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Susan Minot
Living Time, Writing Time: Braiding Two Time Strands
by Jessica Levine
I’ve found that the doubled structure is most likely to be successful when the later point in time has its own forward-moving story. . . . Thus, rule one for works with two time strands: each point in time must generate its own plot. Continue reading
Living Time, Writing Time: Narrating the Fourth Dimension in Fiction
by Jessica Levine
Because I wanted to write novels and knew that writers draw on their memories, the idea of not remembering years of one’s life, the major as well as the minor events, terrified me—an enormous loss not only of experience but also of creative raw material. Continue reading
Q & A with Julia Glass
by Evelyn Somers
What compels me is the resilience of human beings, period. As I’ve said before, all the most lasting fiction is about one thing: how we go on. Some writers tackle this in the context of war or poverty or tyranny; I tackle it through the intimate world of the family. We are all born into one, and most of us do our damnedest to form one. And, again, a certain innate voyeurism makes me want to “know everything” about the messiness of making families work—or the heartbreak and the struggle when they don’t. Continue reading
No Apparent Boundaries: Julia Glass’s Intricate Realities
by Evelyn Somers
Though she does not deliberately set out to tackle hot-button topics (homosexuality, immigration, AIDS, breast cancer and ecological activism all appear in her work), a large part of Glass’s realism comes from the intersection of her characters’ lives with the cultural and political issues that surround them. Continue reading
Q&A With Meg Pokrass
I found flash fiction (originally called short-shorts) in the 1980s when my brain exploded reading the work of Amy Hempel. Around the same time, the tiny, densely sad and gorgeous chapters of Monkeys by Susan Minot similarly stole my heart. Continue reading
