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As the end of the year approaches, Ann Patchett, author and owner of Parnassus Books, and Maureen Corrigan, professor and book critic for NPR’s Fresh Air, reveal their favorite books of 2025 for PBS Newshour, which include The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny (Hogarth, 2025) by Kiran Desai, The Antidote (Knopf, 2025) by Karen Russell, and A Long Game: Notes on Writing Fiction (Ecco, 2025) by Elizabeth McCracken.
“Reading is always an imaginative collaboration between the writer and the reader.” David Szalay talks about his Booker Prize–winning novel, Flesh (Jonathan Cape, 2025), and the episodic style of writing and use of white space in this PBS NewsHour interview with Jeffrey Brown.
Vermont Studio Center (VSC) offers two-, three-, and four-week residencies year-round to poets, fiction writers, creative nonfiction writers, and translators in Johnson, Vermont, a village located in the heart of the northern Green Mountains. VSC offers time and space to write, readings, craft talks, and individual consultations with invited visiting writers. Residents are provided with a private room, a private or shared bathroom, private studio space, and meals as well as shared access to a kitchen and communal spaces.
Vermont Studio Center, 80 Pearl Street, P.O. Box 613, Johnson, VT 05656. (802) 635-2727.
In First Reformed, the 2017 drama film written and directed by Paul Schrader, a tormented minister leading a small congregation in upstate New York finds his mental, physical, and spiritual states unraveling after a situation with a young couple seeking his guidance leads to a shockingly terrible turn of events. Throughout the turmoil, Reverend Ernst Toller continues a project to record onto paper all of his daily activities and unfiltered thoughts for a year with the intention of destroying the journal once he’s done. Write a short story in which your main character is experiencing a particularly tumultuous phase of upheaval and decides to maintain a daily routine of writing in a diary. Incorporate snippets and excerpts from the diary entries to illuminate the character’s biases and singular perspective, lead the reader to conclusions about your character, or shed light on their preoccupations as they navigate a difficult time.
The acclaimed fiction writer, essayist, comic book writer, and screenwriter cautions against growing too rigid in your practice and suggests kicking down some doors and using writing as a multi-tool.
Flash fiction writer Patricia Q. Bidar highlights journals, including Ghost Parachute and Flash Frog, that embrace the shortest of short fiction and have published her work.
The award-winning writer studies how the most powerful horror stories are grounded in “deeply human dilemma,” and how daring the ghoulish can bring us closer to our characters.
Ten authors answer the tenth question in our Ten Questions series: What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received?
In this video, Ricardo Hernandez, assistant director of Programs & Partnerships at Poets & Writers, hosts a celebratory reading by the 2025 Fall Fiction cohort of Get the Word Out, a publicity incubator for early career authors. Introduced by writer and publicist May-Zhee Lim, readers include Hillary Behrman, Denise Derya Brandt, Kim Coleman Foote, Sophia Huneycutt, Rachel León, Kat Lewis, Rajendrani Mukhopadhyay, Radhika Singh, Grace Spulak, and Diana Xin.
The 2026 Neraki International Writers Workshops will be held from June 5 to June 14 at a seaside private home and seminar space in Katigiorgis, Greece. The workshop features craft classes, generative writing sessions, small-group workshops, individual meetings with mentors, unstructured time for writing, and various wellness activities for poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers. The faculty includes poet and fiction writer Paula Closson Buck and fiction and creative nonfiction writer Jim Buck.
Neraki International Writers Workshops, c/o Paula Closson Buck, 145 Jean Boulevard, Lewisburg, PA 17837. (570) 412-2366. Paula Closson Buck, Cofounder.
