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Doug McLean Writers Can Do Anything
William T. Vollmann, author of Last Stories and Other Stories, explains why he works by an assassin's credo: "Nothing is true; all is permissible."
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Doug McLean Taking Sides in the Great Literary Divide Between Nabokov and Roth
Author Joshua Ferris used to believe in 'art for art's sake.' Then he read The Human Stain.
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The Leftovers, Our Town, and the Brutal Power of Ordinary Details
Author Tom Perrotta, co-creator of a much-hyped new HBO drama, says Thornton Wilder's play taught him to write about finding meaning in the banal.
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Doug McLean The Brilliant Nonsense of Elvis Lyrics
Songwriting lessons from the King, as told by indie-rock singer Hamilton Leithauser
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Doug McLean The Surprising Power of Stories That Are Shorter Than Short Stories
Author Stuart Dybek talks about how to layer meaning into works of "flash fiction."
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Doug McLean 'Writing Almost Feels Like Method Acting'
The UnAmericans author Molly Antopol learned from Grace Paley how to inhabit characters that represent political sentiments but don't preach to readers.
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Doug McLean How John Muir Is Revolutionizing the Farm-to-Table Food Movement
Yes, that John Muir. His observations on nature's interconnected systems deeply influenced award-winning chef Dan Barber's new book, The Third Plate.
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Doug McLean What Zadie Smith Taught Roxane Gay: Identity Is Drag
Gay, author of An Untamed State and the forthcoming Bad Feminist, sees her own questions of multi-ethnic and multi-national identity reflected in Smith's NW.
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Doug McLean How Creativity Could Save Humanity
Stefan Zweig, the obscure Austrian writer whose life and work inspired The Grand Budapest Hotel, believed imagination could help propel society toward universal tolerance and accord.
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Doug McLean The Epic Drama of the Imperfect Love Story
Author Mona Simpson talks about Chekhov's "Three Years," which plays on rom-com tropes to convey just how grand a story of two people learning to appreciate each other can be.
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Doug McLean Before You Can Write a Good Plot, You Need to Write a Good Place
The author Linn Ulmann makes the case for the importance of here in “Something happened here.”
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Doug McLean Why Every Writer Needs Two Educations
Marcus Burke, author of Team Seven and a former college athlete, learned from Carter G. Woodson that teaching yourself is just as important as being taught in the classroom.
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Doug McLean 'What Plot Is Grander or More Essential Than Time Passing?'
Maggie Shipstead, author of Astonish Me, looks to Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse as an example of how to speed up and slow down fiction narratives effectively.
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Doug McLean 'We Sweat, Crave, and Itch All Day': Why Writing About Bodies Is Vital
The Empathy Exams author Leslie Jamison felt ashamed of writing about the physical form until a Virginia Woolf essay vindicated her interest in the fluids and muscles that make us human.
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Doug McLean How to Write a Believable Happy Ending
As author Ted Thompson learned from John Cheever, a redemptive resolution doesn't erase the darkness of a story, but instead finds the light within it.
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Doug McLean 'Words on Paper Will Outlast Us': How Claire Messud Distills Her Life
The author of The Woman Upstairs says that writing preserves the worlds we inhabit—even if so much of them dies with us.
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Doug McLean 'I Don't Believe in Writer's Block'
John Steinbeck’s To a God Unknown showed author Alexai Galaviz-Budziszewski that great work can happen when you write without knowing where you're going.
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Doug McLean How Novels Widen Your Vision
Author Dinaw Mengestu says good books help you to recognize yourself in the unfamiliar.
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Doug McLean An Uncomfortable Trick for Honest Writing: Staring at Strangers
Author Yiyun Li doesn't just study people on the subway—she studies her characters, unflinchingly imagining their gaze until she understands them fully.
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Doug McLean Why You Never Truly Finish a Book
Thirty Girls author Susan Minot says great writing—like T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"—is a source of nourishment readers turn to again and again.
