Reader to Writer: I've read your book and I must say that I find it offensive. Your view of life is not only wrong but it might be harmful to readers more naïve than I. You are not ethical. Writer to Reader: I'm not responsible for you or the welfare of any of my readers….
It's never been so bad; it's rarely been so good: an assessment of the current state of American poetry. The bad side: circumstances, some economic, some not. Many major book-review and critical journals have almost entirely ceased reviewing books of poetry-at least, poetry by living writers working in English. One rationale given: there are so…
What is this writing life? I was living alone in a house once, and had set up a study on the first floor. A portable green Smith-Corona typewriter sat on the table against the wall. I made the mistake of leaving the room. I was upstairs when I felt the first tremor. The floor wagged…
"Months in our history play an important role. Perhaps no other nation has as many months of importance. There are thus, ‘Polish September,’ ‘Polish October,’ ‘Polish December,’ ‘Polish August,’ ‘January’ as well as ‘November.’" -Antoni Slonimski (1895-1976), poet and essayist 2 December 1981 On my way to school I found a large crowd in front…
The few years I've spent working with apprentice writers have given me reason to cherish surprises almost above all else. I don't know if conformism is a stronger force in the literature of our time than any other's, but certainly it is insidiously powerful; looking about yourself (in the academy or in the marketplace) you're…
The initial encouragement of publication of David Wong Louie's work should be credited to David Hamilton at The Iowa Review, where two of his earlier stories appeared. Louie has also had work in Chicago Review, Kansas Quarterly, Agni Review, Mid-American Review, Fiction International and others, and is now readying a first collection called Displacement. Louie…
In large measure, Paul Ruffin's short story, "The Fox," speaks for itself. It accomplishes what a well-made short story should, and it goes a step further and satisfies the reader with the sense that this particular author's window into his characters' lives tells its brief tale completely. I feel obliged, however, to endorse this story…
Born in Nebraska, Cathy Carr has lived in North Carolina all through the 1980's. She took her undergraduate degree at Duke University and lists the writer-in-residence there, Mr. Reynolds Price, as a major influence on her thought and writing. She is a recent graduate of the Creative Writing M.F.A. program at the University of North…
From the beginning, Marshall Klimasewiski has instinctively known the point where a story or an anecdote becomes fiction. His earliest efforts, when he had just enrolled as a Creative Writing major here at Carnegie Mellon, already had that center to them, that crossing of emotions which distinguishes a genuine short story, even though these efforts…
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