Readers meet a woman up in the air. Literally. She is flying to Athens, where she will teach a course in creative writing. This is Outline. Perhaps partly because she could instruct in the art of outlining, demonstrate for her students the art of constructing a framework on which
A Chevy truck, a Thermos of coffee, date squares and bologna sandwiches: I Am a Truck begins with the basics. A fishing trip which, both Agathe and Réjean know, is not a fishing trip. Both are aware that he is lying, but it's a charade which Agathe is content
A child's experience of war is strangely pure and slanted. The impact is wholly dramatic at times. Its inconsequence just as overwhelming at other times. Sharing his experiences growing up in a French-Vietnamese family in Saigon, between 1961 and 1963, Marcelino Truong's graphic memoir is vibrant and informative. Some
The dead fuel Jesmyn Ward's novels. She feels the weight of their stories; she shoulders them, shares them. In Sing, Unburied, Sing, their chorus of voices - even in the epigraphs but also in the novel - reverberates between and beyond the covers. Ward's are heart-shattering stories. But they
Reading this story might change your reading life forever. That's what happened to Peter Orner, whose essay on Mavis Gallant's stories is mesmerizing: "The Way Vivid, Way Underappreciated Short Stories of Mavis Gallant", published in The Atlantic's "By Heart" series. "The first story I read is called 'The Ice Wagon
