Craft and Creativity
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Managing the Middle
Tamara Dean is the author of Shelter and Storm, an essay collection forthcoming from the University of Minnesota Press in 2025. Her work has appeared in The American Scholar, Creative Nonfiction, The Georgia Review, the Guardian, One Story, Orion, The Southern Review, and other publications. Subscribe to her monthly email newsletter to get more writing tips and first dibs in her workshops….
Setting as Character in Fiction Writing
Setting as Character in Fiction Writing As a novelist or short story writer, you choose how important setting is for the story you plan to tell. Whether the setting is a real location or an entirely fictional one doesn’t necessarily determine its overall role in the story. You must decide during the drafting phase how…
On Writing What Means Most
It’s You I Like: How Mr. Rogers Said What Was Truest I am fondest of speech that feels like it encapsulates life: short passages that would feel appropriate on my deathbed, or engraved in gold to send out to the aliens. This is a type of speech, almost a genre, and not just an indicator of quality….