Learning From Shame: R.F. Kuang on Diaspora, Language and Writing Young Protagonists: R.F. Kuang is, in the best sense, a literary chameleon. Each one of her novels presents a different setting and dynamic, but her oeuvre is unified by careful thought, sharp… #CraftandAdvice #CraftandCriticism

What Weimar Berlin’s Most Famous Plays Revealed About Artistic Freedom: Is there a German word that means the opposite of “doppelgänger”—not the uncannily mysterious twin, but the secretly matched-up opponent who stands for everything one hates and also hates… #CraftandCriticism #Features

What Peatlands Can Teach Us About Time: I am sitting in a frost pocket in West Virginia, looking at a Canada warbler. It is World Migratory Bird Day in spring, the second Saturday of May, and I have spent the past week in search of warblers. The #ClimateChange #Features

“Get Out.” Advice on Teaching High School From the Late, Great Frank McCourt: On my second day as a rookie English teacher at my alma mater, Stuyvesant High School, I walked down the fourth floor hallway on my way to class. Behind a thick column, lurking in the shadows,… #Biography #CraftandAdvice

Read the Winners of American Short Fiction’s 2026 Insider Prize: Writing is a challenge, at every level. There are constant pressures acting upon a writer: juggling between responsibilities and work; prioritizing health; making and somehow slowing down time; even,… #BookNews #CraftandCriticism

The Literary Agent Who Lost the Narrative Thread: As a literary agent, I’ve spent years shaping the stories of other people’s grief. There was the Pulitzer-nominated journalist who’d lost her only child when he was seven. And the Black descendent of Thomas… #CraftandAdvice #CraftandCriticism

A Legal History of Anti-Chinese Racism in America: In the history of the Chinese in America, the border has caught our attention and held it. Chinese migrants’ attempts to cross the border, and America’s attempts to stop them, is the story that historians have told and retold.… #Features #History

Adam Erlich Sachs on Heinrich von Kleist’s Michael Kohlhaas: The Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast features a series of conversations with past and present Windham-Campbell Prize winners about their favorite books and plays. Hosted by Michael Kelleher. For the… #CraftandAdvice #CraftandCriticism

“50 Things Every AI Working with Humans Should Know”: Read an interview with Ken Liu explaining how this story was written here.* Obituary WHEEP-3 (“Dr. Weep”), probably the most renowned AI AI-critic of the last two decades, was retired by the Shallow Laboratory at… #DailyFiction #Excerpts

Rejected pitches for Practical Magic 2.: This week, whimsigoths from New England to the PNW will be celebrating a long-awaited sequel. Practical Magic 2 revisits characters first conjured in Alice Hoffman’s best-selling novel, and made cult classic in the 1998 film… #FilmandTV #NewsandCulture

34 Books You Need to Read This Fall: The weather has become untrustworthy, for determining the seasons and otherwise. As I write this introduction, the leaves remain stubbornly green, and outside my window there is torrential rain. But at the farmer’s market… #CraftandCriticism #FullwidthSlider