Craft Notes: A Prose Central Series By DeWitt Henry, Prose Editor I evolved shoptalk or notebook sheets during my teaching of fiction workshops, which proved helpful to me and to students. I asked them to ask themselves about character, plot, setting, dialogue, sensory imagery, sentimentality, translation, simultaneous actions and other aspects of craft. But foremost…
Tag: DeWitt Henry
Reflective Grief
A Search for Meaning in Grief By DeWitt Henry, Prose Editor Little Matches: A Memoir of Grief and Light by Maryanne O’Hara (New York: Harper One, April 20, 2021; $26.99; 351 pages; ISBN 978-0-06-302776-3). Maryanne O’Hara’s affecting memoir is both a work of life, and of art. The author tells us flatly from the outset…
Writing Jerks
Craft Notes: A Prose Central Series By DeWitt Henry, Prose Editor I evolved shoptalk or notebook sheets during my teaching of fiction workshops, which proved helpful to me and to students. I asked them to ask themselves about character, plot, setting, dialogue, sensory imagery, sentimentality, translation, simultaneous actions and other aspects of craft. But foremost…
The Virtue of Villains
Shoptalk: A Prose Central Series By DeWitt Henry, Prose Editor I evolved shoptalk or notebook sheets during my teaching of fiction workshops, which proved helpful to me and to students. I asked them to ask themselves about character, plot, setting, dialogue, sensory imagery, sentimentality, translation, simultaneous actions and other aspects of craft. But foremost of…
DAD'S MAYBE BOOK by Tim O'Brien
On Fatherhood, and Lessons for Sons By DeWitt Henry, Prose Editor Dad’s Maybe Book by Tim O’Brien (Houghton Mifflin, 2019. 382 pages, $28.00 hard cover, ISBN 978-0-618-03970-8.) Tim O’Brien is back in top form. His last novel, July, July, appeared when the author was fifty-nine. This new book, a nonfiction hybrid, is part journal about…
On Aphorisms
From Richard Kostalanetz’s A Writer’s Torah A Selection by DeWitt Henry, WTP Prose Editor Individual entries on Richard Kostelanetz’s work in several fields appear in various editions of Readers Guide to Twentieth-Century Writers, Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature, Contemporary Poets, Contemporary Novelists, Postmodern Fiction, Webster’s Dictionary of American Writers, The HarperCollins Reader’s Encyclopedia of American Literature,…
Reflections by Tillie Olsen
“I’ve never had, except once, that happy time when something writes itself…” Transcribed by DeWitt Henry, Prose Editor These reflections were from a recording of Tillie Olsen’s reading at Emerson College, MA, March 23, 1974. I first read Tillie Olsen as part of editing Ploughshares in the 1970s. Sam Lawrence, whom I had contacted as…
THE LIMITS OF THE WORLD by Jennifer Acker
Transcending Cultures and the Limits of Family By DeWitt Henry, Prose Editor THE LIMITS OF THE WORLD by Jennifer Acker (Delphinium Books, April 2019). 300 pp, $25.95. Jennifer Acker’s deeply considered and expansive novel focuses on love and family transcending races, cultures, religions, geography, and time, and calls to mind other recent cross-cultural novels (such…
Featured Bookmarks: The Literary
December 2018 By DeWitt Henry, Literary Bookmarks Editor Monthly link highlights to online resources, magazines, and author sites that seem informative and inspiring for working writers. Most are free. Suggestions are welcomed. The Best of the Net An online annual, The Best of the Net was begun by Erin Elizabeth Smith in 2006 to recognize and promote the…
Featured Bookmarks: The Literary
November 2018 By DeWitt Henry, Literary Bookmarks Editor Monthly link highlights to online resources, magazines, and author sites that seem informative and inspiring for working writers. Most are free. Suggestions are welcomed. Ryan Ridge: Fiction Writer, Poet, Editor Ridge’s site looks offhanded and simplistic at first. “Home” offers a cartoonish line sketch of the back of a…
Book Review: Inventing the World
On the Craft of Writing, for All Levels By DeWitt Henry, Literary Bookmarks Editor INVENTING THE WORLD: THE FICTION WRITER’S GUIDEBOOK TO CRAFT AND PROCESS by Jack Smith (Serving House Books, 2018). 285pp, $15.95. Jack Smith’s essays on “the craft and process” of writing fiction have appeared since 2010 in either The Writer or in…
Book Review: Sweet Marjoram
Essays Inspired by Poetry By Joyce Peseroff, WTP Contributing Editor SWEET MARJORAM: NOTES AND ESSAYS by DeWitt Henry (Madhat Press, October 2018). 156pp, $21.95. I don’t usually write about prose, but Sweet Marjoram is an exception. In part, it’s because DeWitt Henry is a dear friend whose work I’ve read for decades. It’s also because…