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In this episode of Cannonball With Wesley Morris, the host speaks with Parul Sehgal, critic at large at the New York Times, and Sasha Weiss, deputy editor at the New York Times Magazine, about the power of Toni Morrison’s writing and share some of their favorite passages from her novels.
Whether created due to convenience or to traverse through mounds of snow, desire paths are made when people diverge from official walkways to get to their desired destination, and others follow along. It might be a trail of worn grass beside a concrete walkway or a narrow, squiggly line through unplowed snow. “Desire lines are inherently subversive. They remind us that we have a choice, and that we can veer away from what was laid out for us. And the paths are personal, uneven and meandering,” writes Anna Kodé in a recent New York Times article. Write a short series of vignettes that imagines the first person who created a certain desire path, and the subsequent users of that pathway. What are the motivations of the characters who go off the beaten path?
“I am often wildly optimistic about my productivity in the mornings. This feeling lasts no later than noon.” —Jordy Rosenberg
The author of Clutch (Tin House, February 2026) describes the rigorous line work that went into finishing her manuscript.
Tayari Jones discusses her new novel, Kin (Knopf, 2026), and the history she uncovered in her research for the book in a conversation with Jill Cox-Cordova, former Library Journal editor, for this virtual event of the Penguin Random House Winter Book and Author Festival. For more from Jones, read her installment of our Ten Questions series.
In this PBS NewsHour video, Elizabeth Alexander, president of the Mellon Foundation, speaks about the efforts to support literary nonprofits, including independent publishers, residencies, and fellowships for writers.
In a 2016 interview for the Film Stage, French director Mia Hansen-Løve, known for her philosophical drama films that revolve around familial and romantic relationships and loss, talks about an unexpected connection between her own works and Michael Mann’s 1995 blockbuster crime drama Heat, starring Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro. She recognizes that the film about a detective and a career thief is actually about “action vs. melancholy and self-destruction—action becoming self-destruction,” themes Hansen-Løve sees in her own films “except in a very different way, in a very different world.” Think of a favorite film of yours with a genre that is, at least on the surface, extremely different from the type of fiction you tend to write. Consider the larger themes that are investigated in that work and write a short story that explores these themes in your own way, and in your own world.
“I think that losing the joy of process causes writer’s block.” —Tayari Jones, author of Kin
The author of Clutch (Tin House, February 2026) reflects on adjusting rising and falling action across time in fiction.
Boa Editions celebrates a half century of independent publishing and releases a previously unpublished collection of Lucille Clifton’s poetry.
