Read the winning piece of our 2025 Nonfiction Contest “Through the Mirror” by Jessie Cato selected by Lucy Ives.

Read
July 16, 2019

On Writing as Wish Fulfillment

By Aatif Rashid

I was in elementary school when I first started “writing” stories—I would take the Hot Wheels toy cars I’d collected since I was a toddler, name them all after my […]

July 9, 2019

On Reading Your Work Out Loud

By Aatif Rashid

When I wrote my first novel, Portrait of Sebastian Khan, I often worked in cafes, if I was lucky at a corner table where I could angle my screen away […]

November 6, 2018

On Titles

By Aatif Rashid

It’s always amusing to read about the original titles of famous novels. A few years ago an infographic from Jonkers Rare Books made the rounds on the Internet and revealed […]

October 26, 2018

On Character Names

By Aatif Rashid

Picking a character name is often as hard as writing the first line of a new novel or story—the kind of specific and essential task that often halts any momentum […]