May 13, 2019
“What Are You Doing?” and Other Questions to Ask Your Characters
In my second year of graduate school, I attended a reading by Charles Baxter, who was at that time a visiting professor at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. This was in […]
March 25, 2019
On A TALE OF FOUR DERVISHES by Mir Amman
Amman, Mir. A Tale of Four Dervishes. Translated from the Urdu with an Introduction by Mohammed Zakir. Penguin Classics (India), 1994. 158 pages. Continuing my exploration of Penguin India’s […]
September 13, 2018
The Structure of Nanette
Much has been written in recent months of Nanette, comedian Hannah Gadsby’s groundbreaking Netflix standup special. The New York Times labeled it “comedy-destroying” and “soul-affirming,” Vox called it a “tour de […]
February 27, 2017
The Autobiography of Anything
As of this writing, I’ve spent the last few days hanging around home nursing a cold. During this time, I’ve listened to This American Life, read from Angela Carter’s Book […]
June 25, 2016
Memory is Elsewhere
“I want you to tell me a story ‘bout when you were a little boy,” says my four-year-old girl every night. I tell her things I remember, and things I’ve […]
March 12, 2015
How to Write Human: Outkast’s Art of Storytellin’
Literature is at its best when it humanizes its characters and, by extension, its readers. The poetry of the duo Outkast, comprised of Big Boi and Andre 3000, peels back the […]
September 18, 2013
Storytelling Now, or, Watching Movies at the Gym
At Eastern Tennessee State University, you can earn a Master of Arts in Storytelling. Located in Johnson City, Tennessee, “in the heart of traditional storytelling country,” the next town over […]
May 23, 2013
The Regression to the Primitive
Northrop Frye, discussing the arc of Shakespeare’s plays, says something very profound about Shakespeare’s late “Romances,” like A Winter’s Tale and Pericles, Prince of Tyre. …as a dramatist, […]
December 28, 2012
The Importance of Telling a Good Story
You would think that with scientific knowledge expanding ever so exponentially, and literalist interpretations of traditional scriptures undermined east and west by it, you would see a great popular surge […]
July 15, 2012
Life Alone Lives Forever: Quest Stories and the Principle of Irreplaceability
I’ve read somewhere (in more than one place, I think) that all stories, or almost all stories, are variations on one story, treasured across cultures and eras, the Quest. The […]
February 25, 2012
Poetry, Prose, and Prosetry: Shakespeare’s Hybrid Vigor
Prose took over storytelling (both in narrative and dramatic form) beginning in the 17th century. The prose shift in full-scale narrative commences with Quijote, which is why critics have […]
May 17, 2010
Flea Market Value
There’s nothing like moving cross-country to make you hate your stuff. And there’s nothing like a good flea market to make you forget that you hate moving and you have […]