Poetry: Passing Time
Tehching Hsieh: Lifeworks 1978–1999, currently on view at Dia Beacon in New York’s Hudson Valley, is the first U.S. retrospective covering the Taiwanese conceptual artist’s performance works. Each of his projects, which last an entire year, pushes at the boundaries between life and art: 365 days spent locked in a wooden cage, or living on the streets of New York City, or punching in on a time clock every hour on the hour in his studio, or tethering himself with a rope to another artist. “My art is doing time, so it’s not different from doing life or doing art, or doing time. No matter whether I stay in ‘art-time’ or ‘life-time,’ I am passing time,” Hsieh said in a 2019 interview for the Believer. How is the passing of time connected to your sense of observation as a poet? Write a poem that reflects the distinctions or similarities between your “art-time” and “life-time.”
Fiction: Unnamed
In Maria Stepanova’s novel The Disappearing Act, translated from the Russian by Sasha Dugdale, forthcoming in February from New Directions, the narrator, like the author, is a writer navigating the challenges of living in exile after her home country invades a neighboring state. Ambiguity or the absence of identity is prevalent throughout the novel—the protagonist, cities, and countries are never explicitly named. “The foreign city where M now lived was full of people fleeing from both countries, and those who’d been attacked by her own compatriots regarded their former neighbors with horror and suspicion, as if life before the war had ceased to have any meaning,” writes Stepanova. Compose a short story that makes use of this type of anonymity to create a narrative that circles around themes of alienation, disappearance, escape, and loneliness. In the world of your story, how does this anonymity serve the journey that your character is embarking on?
Nonfiction: High Tech
“I notice a weird thing about Zoom: In order to give people the impression that you’re making eye contact, you have to look not at them but at the camera lens,” writes Anne Fadiman in her essay “Screen Share,” which appears in her collection Frog: And Other Essays, forthcoming in February from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. “Their images are lower down. If you look at them, you won’t look as if you’re looking at them.” In the essay, Fadiman recounts shifting from teaching in-person classes to learning a new technology during the pandemic, as well as the social and practical challenges she and her students faced. Write a personal essay about your relationship to a specific technology, whether it be smartphones, apps, navigation systems, chatbots, or streaming media. What is revealed by the technology you choose to use when it comes to your values and relationships?
Suggested Reading
A Long Game: Notes on Writing Fiction (Ecco, December 2025) by Elizabeth McCracken
A collection of 280 notes filled with personal and professional lessons gleaned from a teaching career stretching back more than thirty-five years; informed by the writing and publication of seven acclaimed books of fiction, most recently the novel The Hero of This Book (Ecco, 2022); and infused with the author’s signature humility, humanity, and humor, A Long Game is a guide not only to the craft of writing fiction, but also to the art of living as a working writer. Free of surefire claims and one-size-fits-all rules, the book grew from the belief that there are no definitive answers to the questions that arise when a writer is truly engaged in the act of writing. “A writing life, I’ve come to believe, is a yearslong process of casting away everything you once believed for sure,” she writes. Instead, McCracken shares tips and insights that allow writers to find their own answers. “Different writers need different advice,” she notes. A Long Game has lessons for everyone.
Thumbnail credit: A. C. via Unsplash
