Alexander Chee on What Writing Parties Reveals About Characters
The author of The Queen of the Night describes how a scene by Charlotte Bronte showed him the dramatic stakes of social interaction in fiction.
By Heart
Authors share and discuss their all-time favorite passages in literature.
The Promise of Flawed Characters
The author Paul Lisicky describes how Flannery O’Connor pulls her subjects apart to make them stronger.
How to Write: A Year in Advice From ‘By Heart’
Highlights from 12 months of interviews with writers about their craft and the authors they love
How Fiction Can Survive in a Distracted World
The writer Kevin Barry believes that the medium’s best hope lies in the mesmerizing power of audio storytelling.
Lorin Stein on the Power of Ambiguity in Fiction
The Paris Review editor discusses why the best stories ask more questions then they answer.
When People—and Characters—Surprise You
Mary Gaitskill, author of The Mare, explains how a single moment in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina reveals its characters’ hidden selves.
‘Stories Are a Living Thing’
The ex-Granta editor John Freeman on how the author Louise Erdrich perfectly interprets Faulkner
Lauren Groff on Writing With Lightness
The Fates and Furies author describes how Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse portrays the span of life.
The Magic of Where the Wild Things Are
The author and illustrator Brian Selznick discusses how Maurice Sendak showed him the power of picture books.
Subverting the Rule of ‘Write What You Know’
The novelist Angela Flournoy discusses how Zora Neale Hurston helped her imagine characters and experiences alien to her.