I've been thinking recently about the New Zealand writer Janet Frame, as I do every few years. This time, it's in part because I'm doing research for a lit paper on what Foucault called the "Great Confinement" of the 17th Century, when the mentally ill…

One evening last summer, my best friend Christopher and I were drinking wine and watching the sun go down over the Atlantic Ocean when he decided that it was the perfect time to give a solemn recap of South Park's mid-season finale, "You're Getting Old."…

Since its publication in Sunday's New York Times, Annie Murphy Paul's "Your Brain on Fiction" has gone viral among my friends and fellow writers. If you haven't read it yet, you can find it here. In the piece, Paul calls attention to research into the…

Friends, I do not sleep. I eat; I sip; I worry. A lot. I think of my manuscript, trapped under the desk of the judge of a book prize, unbeknownst to him, whimpering and calling out for crackers and water. I think of the judge, a man with mismatch socks…

Hello readers, If you're around the Chicago area, stop by our reading at Buddy Guy's Legends (700 South Wabash) tomorrow, March 1st, from 8:30-10:30 p.m. We've teamed up with Indiana Review to bring you readings by Michael Czyzniejewski, Ross Gay, Aimee…

"Where is Kenya on the world map?" I ask freshmen every semester as part of our introductions. It's part of my evolving "teaching philosophy" which is premised on stimulating intellectual curiosity as part of the learning process. "Africa," comes the…

It's safe to say that I'm fully entrenched in the creative writing subculture. I've done the entire CWP gauntlet: undergrad, MFA, PhD. I submit to journals. I edit journals. I give people advice on how to submit to journals. I've started a failed reading…

Sometime after the New Year but before Valentine's Day, I saw an internet meme on Facebook that said: Pick up the nearest book to you. Turn to page 45. The first sentence describes your sex life in 2012. Ok, I thought. It being a time of new beginnings,…

Once a week, someone lets me into a room full of children. I am supposed to teach them creative writing. Here's the thing: I am sometimes scared of children. It is because they know the truth, and they will tell you every time, like it or not. Once they…

There is a scene during Alison Maclean's adaptation of Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son in which our hero Fuckhead (Billy Crudup) and his partner Wayne are celebrating a scrap-metal windfall with cheap whiskey shots at The Vine. In the book, the scene occurs…