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cover of Ayiti by Roxane Gay

The Books We Teach #2: Interview with Roxane Gay

The Books We Teach series will feature primary, secondary, and post-secondary educators and their thoughts about literature in the face of an evolving classroom. Posts will highlight literary innovations in teaching, contemporary literature’s place in pedagogy, and the books that writers teach. In the spirit of educational dynamism, we encourage readers to contribute their thoughts…

headshot of Cheryl Strayed

Fantasy Blog Draft – Round 3 – Wildcard Picks!

[Editor’s note: If your March Madness bracket got busted, never fear! You can now redeem yourself with our Fantasy Blog Draft Bracket! Starting June 11, our completed teams will be facing off against each other, with reader votes on Facebook determining the winners. Until then, you can pick your winners here. We’ll score your picks…

In a procession, characters in the style of Ancient Greek dress, with various ancient weapons, walk in an etching.

Do Characters Dream of Left-Justified Sheep? (Part Two)

How can you avoid bad dream-writing? Part One of this post appeared on Monday. All right, let’s talk about the good things dreams can do for your writing process. Let’s have some nice dreams. Real-ize Your Dream  Have you ever used a dream as inspiration for writing? George Saunders did this in “Pastoralia,” which, as he puts it,…

photograph of an old, yellowed page from a novel with the heading "CHAPTER ONE"
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Do Characters Dream of Left-Justified Sheep? (Part One)

I had the strangest dream about you last night, my husband said. You were surrounded by wood. There were wood walls, floors. All this old furniture everywhere. Of course, a wife is keenly interested in her husband’s dreams, especially if she’s the star. But what struck me about my husband’s dream was its accuracy: I’m…

the cover of the story of my purity by Francesco Pacifico--a halo has been illustrated over the "i" in purity

The Story of My Purity

The Story of My Purity Francesco Pacifico Farrar, Straus and Giroux, March 2013 304 pages $26.00 I don’t know much about providence, but it seems extraordinarily lucky that Francisco Pacifico’s first novel to make it into English translation—a ribald picaresque of Catholicism, breasts, and a conspiracy theory wherein Pope John Paul II was a Jewish…