Raymond Carver, Gordon Lish, and the Editor as Enabler
As the story goes, most of what American readers love about Raymond Carver is not the work of Carver at all.
Gordon Lish
An Interview With Ken Sparling
“My greatest influences are those moments in my past where I’ve been surprised, or where I’ve surprised someone. Those are the moments that stay with me. Reading Jonathan Goldstein’s book Lenny Bruce is Dead was one of those instances where I was profoundly surprised.”
Origin Stories: Fiction by Prompt
How do great authors begin their fiction? With a line or a character, a memory or a mission? This year, as Ploughshares’s unofficial origin-story archivist, I’ll investigate. Because I’m a teacher, I started by looking for stories that grew out of writing assignments. Here’s what I found. 1. Amy Hempel’s “In the Cemetery Where Al…