Poetry and prose have always offered powerful inroads to the unknown, opening paths for us to imagine beyond the here and now, to animate the questions that drive us, to venture what we might not otherwise find the courage to say. But as writers we can nonetheless forget just how expansive our visions might be and how diverse our tools for telling the stories that feel most urgent to us. And so we’re looking across the wide literary landscape at the lessons that can be gleaned from various genres of writing and brought back to bear on any work. May these lessons add new techniques to your literary tool kit—and may they inspire you to take bigger risks, chance the weird, and challenge the limits of what you’ve thought your writing can do and be.
In this Special Section:
• Conjure the Strange: Lessons From Horror by Victor LaValle
• Embrace the “And Then”: Lessons From Fairy Tales by Aimee Bender
• Cultivate Suspense: Lessons From Thrillers by David Heska Wanbli Weiden
• Seek the Unknown in the Familiar: Lessons From Historical Fiction by Brenda Wineapple
• Brave New Metaphors: Lessons From Science Fiction by Matt Bell
Plus: New Ways of Seeing: Our Twenty-First Annual Look at Debut Poets
Thumbnail: Matt Stevens