Pull your attention from anything and it fades; put your attention on something else and it grows.

I often feel that I lose track of myself when I write, but it’s maybe more accurate to say I connect to my truest self.

My workroom is nearly as quiet as my bedroom at midnight. I love this quiet, however.

If you’re an artist, you’re in the business of inventing realities.

My worst addiction hasn’t been drugs or alcohol, but the future.

You can’t really fake it. You can try. You can tell yourself you’re interested in a certain kind of story because that’s what’s selling, that’s what women between the ages of 35 and 55 are reading now.

The question, then, is not what you will experience, but the story you will tell yourself about those experiences.

I collect stories of artists who’ve been told by industry professionals that their novel, or their play, or their song just isn’t what people are looking for.

Sarvat Hasin is a novelist and dramaturg from Pakistan. She has a masters in creative writing from the University of Oxford. Her first novel, This Wide Night, was published by Penguin Random House India and longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. Her second book, You Can’t Go Home Again, was published in 2018 and featured in Vogue India's and The Hindu's best of the year lists. Her third novel, The Giant Dark, was a runaway critical success, won the Mo Siewcharran Prize, and was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Encore Award. Strange Girls is her US debut. She lives in London.

Jennifer Murphy holds an MFA in painting from the University of Denver and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Washington. She is the recipient of the 2013 Loren D. Milliman Scholarship for creative writing and was a contributor at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference from 2008 through 2012. In 2015, her acclaimed debut novel, I Love You More (Doubleday, 2014), won the prestigious Nancy Pearl Fiction Award. Her love of art led her to start Citi Arts, a public art and urban planning company that has created public art master plans for airports, transit facilities, streetscapes, and cities nationwide. She hails from a small beachfront town in Michigan and has lived in Denver, Charlotte, Seattle, and Charleston.

Travis Baldree is a full-time audiobook narrator who has lent his voice to hundreds of stories. Before that, he spent decades designing and building video games like Torchlight, Rebel Galaxy, and Fate. Apparently, he now also writes #1 New York Times bestselling books. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.

Tara Moss is an internationally bestselling author, human rights activist, documentary and podcast host, and model. Her crime novels have been published in nineteen countries and thirteen languages, and her memoir, The Fictional Woman, was a #1 international bestseller.

Stephen Greenblatt is Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. He has written extensively on English Renaissance literature and acts as general editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature and The Norton Shakespeare. He is the author of fifteen books, including The Swerve, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, and Will in the World, a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Dark Renaissance is his latest.

Sue William Silverman is an award-winning author known for her fearless explorations of trauma, identity, and personal transformation. Her latest book, “Selected Misdemeanors: Essays at the Mercy of the Reader,” showcases her signature blend of lyricism, insight, and unflinching honesty.

Bernice L. McFadden is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Tulane University and the author of several critically acclaimed novels, including Sugar, The Warmest December, Loving Donovan, Nowhere Is a Place, Glorious, Gathering of Waters (a New York Times Editors' Choice and one of the 100 Notable Books of 2012), The Book of Harlan (winner of a 2017 American Book Award and the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, Fiction), and Praise Song for the Butterflies (long-listed for the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction).

Kate Russo, author of Until Alison and Super Host, grew up in Maine but now divides her time between Maine and the UK. She has an MFA in painting from the Slade School of Fine Art, and while living in London, she worked with the theatre group, Love Bites, who presented two of her short plays (“The Blind” and “Bernie's Night Off”) at the Calder Bookshop Theatre.  She exhibits widely in the United States and England. Learn more at KateRusso.com and connect on Instagram @RussoKate.

Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World. Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Today Show, Wired, Fox News, and BBC

Megan Abbott is the Edgar-winning author of the novels Beware the Woman, The Turnout, Give Me Your Hand, You Will Know Me, The Fever, Dare Me, The End of Everything, Bury Me Deep, Queenpin, The Song Is You and Die a Little. Her most recent is El Dorado Drive.

Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Salon, the Guardian, Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, and The Believer. Her stories have appeared in multiple collections, including the Best American Mystery Stories of 2014 and 2016.

"All of us possess a reading vocabulary as big as a lake but draw from a writing vocabulary as small as a pond."

Roy Peter Clark wrote that in Writing Tools, and it names something most writers feel but rarely examine. The words are there; accumulated through years of reading, conversation, and education. They simply don't come to hand when a sentence needs them. And so, we reach for what's close rather than what's right, and the sentence works, but it doesn't sing.

Years ago, I took a class on “Authentic Happiness” taught by a NC State professor who offered these continuing education classes at UNC’s Friday Center.  Often, I signed up for classes related to writing. Although this one wasn’t, I reflect on it when I sit down to compose a fictional story, personal essay, or even an article.

I know it’s been a while. Sometimes it feels like I’m circling inside an endless loop of rejection, as if the same door keeps swinging shut no matter how many times I gather the courage to knock. Each “no” folds into the next, tightening around me until hope feels fragile, almost foolish. I tell myself not to care so much, not to expect anything. And yet, the moment I hit submit, something inside me rises. It always does. And then it falls.

Health is a subject that connects all of us. Writers use such scenes to create drama, build emotional investment in a story, and to develop tension. Neurosurgery, head injuries, and chronic diseases, among others, affect a character's personality and create an opportunity for change. However, it's important to get the details right because readers notice mistakes and unchecked errors perpetuate false information, skewing facts.

The relentless click-click-click of a metronome may be helpful for practicing finger exercises, but it’s deathly dull for an audience. Classical composers use Italian terms to signal changes in the desired pace of their music, such as lento (slow), allegro (lively), and presto (very fast). My favorite of these is rubato, literally “robbed” time, meaning the performer is free to “rob” a moment from one note and give it to the next.

We often speak of a writer’s voice, that distinct and resonant quality that separates one narrative from another on a crowded shelf. We talk of plot, of structure, of the muscularity of good prose. These are the tools of our trade, the timber and nails of the houses we build for our stories.

Today, in 2026, when someone hears my accent and asks where I’m from, I hesitate. I lower my eyes, give a small smile, and say, “I was born and raised in St. Petersburg, Russia.” I hear the words and feel a pinch of embarrassment. I don’t always want to explain the Russia I knew—my Russia—because it feels so different from the Russia people picture today.  

But things were very different in 1993. That was the year I moved, by a rather unlikely twist of fate, from St. Petersburg to a small college town with a surprising name: Moscow… Moscow, Idaho.

What makes your writing unique? When readers come across your books, what do they see that makes them know it’s yours?

Establishing your position within the writing community can feel impossible, especially if you are just beginning your career. Each writer you come across pulls you in different directions, which can make it challenging to find your creative identity. The tendency to adopt the stylistic elements of a recently read work is a natural part of writing, one that contributes to your emerging voice.

As a judge for the popular storytelling platform NYC Midnight, I read a lot of flash fiction and microfiction submissions. For the unfamiliar, flash fiction is loosely defined as a short story of up to 1,000 words. Microfiction is a subset of flash fiction, with stories weighing in at 100 words or less. 

When I first began freelancing, it could get lonely. It was not like other jobs where you have coworkers with whom to bounce ideas off or solve problems, but writers need watering holes, too. Sometimes there is no one else that understands what you’re going through better than those who have been through it as well

Tom Rob Smith, Jamie Ford, Nicola Griffith, Jussi Adler-Olsen, and Stella Cameron on why stories matter.

Ingrid Ricks, Theo Pauline Nestor, Katie Hafner, and Gregory Martin discuss the challenges of writing memoir.

How writing saved the live of Andres Dubus III, Gary Zukav, and Deb Caletti.

Lessons learned from the writing life, featuring Cheryl Strayed, Elizabeth George, Thirty Umrigar, Deb Caletti, and more . . .

Advice and inspiration from Wally Lamb, Clive Clussler, Lee Child, Stephanie Kallos, and more.

Inspiring advice from Sir Ken Robinson, Yann Martel, Gary Zukav, Andre Dubus III, and more.