Tenth of December

Across the country this November, aspiring novelists are clacking away at their keyboards in service of National Novel Writing Month, in which participants must write 50,000 words in 30 days. Part of the process for many involves reading any book of writing advice they can get their hands on, alongside profiles and interviews with their favorite authors, in […]

George Saunders is both a blackly hilarious satirist and our most compassionate writer, who takes as his subject the striving of ordinary (and sub-ordinary) people to be good, to live decently, to do no harm, frequently under extraordinary, near-futuristic circumstances. He’s known first as a short story writer, and his works often culminate in moments of […]

Novelists seem to get all the hype. The short story was once considered just as important as the novel—think Hemingway or Chekhov—but at some point, there just didn’t seem to be a market for short fiction any more. But recently, that’s begun to change. New technology, shorter attention spans, and a wave of films adapted from […]