Why tell a story? Why tell your story? What, in fact, is storytelling? I put these questions out there not so much to answer them myself but to have you think about them, particularly because these qu...

As any writer and discerning reader knows, many elements go into developing and writing a story or work of nonfiction. For me, the voice of a literary text is the border of the puzzle that moves smoot...

In the need to find the pieces of you, to find your voice and your self or identity, keeping a journal is of the utmost importance. The only person who can do the work of this search and identificatio...

Why do we write literature? Why do we read it? I think the simple, understated answer is to feel connected. I think what gives literature (the fictions we write, the stories we tell) its sense of perm...

Literature must explore the world and the human condition; its reflection of human nature should be so clear and honest that it leaves no question as to its true purpose, which is to instill in us an ...

The literature we read is, on the surface, about a variety of different things, but beneath the handful of similar plots and narratives that are altered only by different characters and places there a...

Every individual has their own interests. Many of us not only become practiced in these interests but knowledgeable in them as well. If you wish to share your interests by writing about them, you must...

IN-PERSON + ONLINE Series runs from 09/16/25 – 11/18/25 on Tuesday evenings , 6:30pm–9:00pm How many times have you thought about writing your memoir? Felt that pull to share your compelling sto...

IN-PERSON Series runs from 09/16/25 – 11/18/25 on Tuesday evenings , 6:30pm–9:00pm How many times have you thought about writing your memoir? Felt that pull to share your compelling story not j...

I’m not going to discuss what makes a work of literature a classic. That’s a complicated, consuming question. What I want to address is when one should read the classics. Simply put, a literary classi...

The most important tool any writer can develop is their voice. And throughout the years as you mature as an individual, your voice will change and evolve along with you

Books speak. They contain the voices of individuals from the past telling us who we are as human beings, individually and as a race, by showing us in great meditative detail who they were as individ...

Literature shows us the humanness of our experiences, and the universality of those experiences. The details may be different (gender, time period, locale, even language) but human character, literatu...

There is great truth in the saying “the pen is mightier than the sword”; transformative ideas are not born of the sword and violence, but of thoughtful reflection and analysis set down in language.

In early 2013 I decided to start writing in a journal again. From August 2000 through 2007 I had kept a journal of ideas and responses to different books I had been reading. Around late 2003 my journa...

As a writer for more than a quarter century now, it was not until reading Yevgeny Zamyatin’s ‘We,’ that I gave the idea of the author’s duty, or the writer’s responsibility, more than a passing though...

Nineteenth-century authors wrote lengthy narratives with numerous characters, weaving their lives together or creating parallel lives in the same landscape. Nineteenth-century fiction, more often than...

From a longtime Vanity Fair writer and editor, a delightfully entertaining, intelligent, and illuminating history and tribute to teen movies—from R...

Nineteenth-century authors wrote lengthy narratives with numerous characters, weaving their lives together or creating parallel lives in the same landscape. Nineteenth-century fiction, more often than...