Genre: Fiction

Nature and Culture

The Time Is Now
10.15.25

A single father living quietly with his daughter in a small mountain village in Japan finds his day-to-day routine and peaceful, self-sufficient existence disrupted by real estate developers in Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s 2023 film Evil Does Not Exist. The collaborative systems of care and mutual exchange that characterize the villagers’ way of life clash with the corporation’s focus on capitalist profit, and the delicate balance of nature and civilization is called into question. This week write a short story that revolves around the disturbance of a balance between nature and culture. You might find it helpful to begin by brainstorming specific areas in your chosen setting where the natural environment and human-made spaces depend on each other or have had to adjust to make way for the other. What are the ramifications of a disruption to this balance?

Ten Questions for Megha Majumdar

by
Evangeline Riddiford Graham
Ten Questions
10.14.25

“Becoming a mother, and feeling the ferocity of love that parents hold for their children, and doing the daily work of parenting, helped me find the emotional core of the book.” —Megha Majumdar, author of A Guardian and a Thief

Tags: 
craft | motherhood | libraries

László Krasznahorkai at the Library of Congress

Caption: 

In this 2012 Library of Congress event, László Krasznahorkai reads from his novel Satantango (New Directions, 2013), translated from the Hungarian by George Szirtes, and speaks about the evolution of his writing style and the relationship between author and translator. Krasznahorkai is the winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Genre: 
Fiction
Translation
Tags: 
László Krasznahorkai
Library of Congress
Hungarian
Satantango
New Directions
reading
writing process
Nobel Prize

Alaska Pacific University

MFA Program
Poetry, Fiction, Creative Nonfiction
Anchorage, AK
Application Deadline: 
Wed, 04/01/2026
Application Fee: 
$35

O‘ahu Writers Mini-Retreat

November/December 2025

The O‘ahu Writers Mini-Retreat will be held on November 29 and November 30 at a historic vacation property in the town of Waialua, on the North Shore of O‘ahu, Hawai‘i. The retreat features generative writing workshops, critiques, and arts and crafts breaks for poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers. The faculty includes poet Tamara Leiokanoe Moan, fiction writer Tom Gammarino, and creative nonfiction writer Constance Hale. Tuition is $120 for one day and $200 for both days; lodging is not included, but lunch is.

Type: 
CONFERENCE
Ignore Event Date Field?: 
no
Event Date: 
November 29, 2025
Rolling Admissions: 
ignore
Application Deadline: 
November 29, 2025
Financial Aid?: 
yes
Free Admission: 
no
Contact Information: 

O‘ahu Writers Mini-Retreat, 1040 56th Street, Oakland, CA 94608. (617) 909-1439. Constance Hale, Director.

Constance Hale
Director
Contact City: 
Waialua
Contact State: 
HI
Country: 
US
Genre: 
Poetry
Fiction
Creative Nonfiction

Cheesy Truths

The Time Is Now
10.8.25

Known for his postmodern satirical novels filled with secret conspiracies and government plots, Thomas Pynchon’s new novel, Shadow Ticket, out this week from Penguin Press, begins in Depression-era Milwaukee and follows a private detective whose search of a runaway cheese heiress gets him entangled with the Chicago mafia, the Bureau of Investigation, British intelligence, Nazism, and international capitalist conspiracies. This week write a short story that makes use of a current event that might seem absurd or stranger than fiction, spinning off from the actual details of the real event into something weirder. How can you inject humor into a story that gestures to real concerns about paranoia and dysfunctional politics?

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