July 23, 2019
Flannery O’Connor and Kierkegaard
What could make a woman resign herself to her own death and that of her family? The answer to this question emerges through reading southern writer Flannery O’Connor and the […]
June 19, 2019
Ken Kesey’s “Keyhole of Literature”
In an essay published in The New York Times in 1989 (incidentally, the year I was born), Ken Kesey recounts a writing lesson he once received from short story writer […]
January 29, 2019
On Subtlety and Meaning in Fiction
When I was a freshman in college, I took my first creative writing class, a small two week workshop that was part of a summer study abroad program. For the […]
May 31, 2018
Should Fiction Writers Study Literary Theory?
In her 2010 review of Mark McGurl’s The Program Era, Elif Batuman makes the following observation: a schism has opened up between literary scholarship and creative writing: disciplines which differ in […]
April 6, 2018
In Defense of “Show Don’t Tell”
Part One of Mark McGurl’s The Program Era (2009), the now-classic history of the influence of writing programs on twentieth-century American literature, uses as its title two of the hallmark […]
May 27, 2016
Books Fall Apart
Over the last week, loose pages from The Bluest Eye have been appearing outside my house. Page 156 in the front garden. Page 147 caught under the chain-link fence. Page […]
August 23, 2012
Mix Tape: Literary Crimes
Andrew Scott responds to the “ladder-climbing” and “posturing” behind nasty reviews and other writer-on-writer crimes. When an English professor wrote to Flannery O’Connor and asked her to explain one of […]
July 24, 2011
The Best Of: Autumn 1960
a continuation of this series, we now announce the final Old Series nominee for “Best Issue Ever,” selected from The Kenyon Review, 1960-1969. For previous posts in this series, read […]
July 4, 2011
KR in the 60’s: “America goes on, goes on”
a whirlwind survey of the Kenyon Review’s final Old Series decade, part of this special summer blog series and a follow-up to these previous surveys of the 40’s AND 50’s! […]
October 14, 2010
Till There Is No Night: W.S. Merwin’s Writing Prompt For You
Here is how a tongue becomes a bell. Below is the text of a post post-script in a letter W.S. Merwin set to John Crowe Ransom in 1953. The occasion […]
August 9, 2010
The Kids Are All Bright
A favorite teacher of mine tipped me early on that there would be people who would tell you never to write about childhood, especially not from the perspective of a […]