(On two themes) (A) As I sat down to write this piece (again and again attempting to begin and failing, taking each failure to heart so that the next time I sat to write it was harder to even think of writing and instead I wasted time reading articles on the internet or just used…

In her diary, Woolf writes, “Then we walked down the river, in the face of a cold gale […] & gladly came home to tea; & now sit as usual surrounded by books & paper & ink, & so shall sit till bedtime—save that I have some mending to do” (p. 34—February 14, 1915). +…

Fragments of Virginia Woolf (/of Anne Olivier Bell*). (ix): “I must beg those who find such explanations superfluous to ignore the footnotes.” “her choice and use of words often appears almost miraculous” The miraculous apparition of a writer’s words (the moment, some months after I have written something, a moment when, usually, I am not…

1. I ask myself about being in this space with its title ‘necessary’ and its title ‘fiction’. 2. Yet here I am, and despite doubts, under those banners. 3. Some years ago I thought, I am a poet because I cannot write anything longer than a page. I couldn’t imagine the kind of attention that…

One of the wonderful things about an origin story is the suddenness with which it can strike. One day you’re living your ordinary life… then, blam, revelation: you see, say, taste, touch, hear, smell something that forever changes things. For me, it started innocently enough in a college classroom. A creative writing professor had us…

If I’m telling the truth, I’ve also been thinking of narratives of origin because this summer I am returning to fiction writing after time away to write a nonfiction book and to parent a chronically sick child. For three years, our little boy cried (what seemed like all day, every day) and he did not…

Of all the quests and callings one could pursue, why fiction? It’s the kind of question we could put to anyone. Why turn to sheep, shepherds? Why the law, lawyers? But to ask a storyteller to tell a story about telling stories — that gets tricky. The philosopher/literary critic Kenneth Burke has a phrase I…

When I was a child, some of my teachers thought I must have been mentally deficient because I looked so weirdly underdeveloped compared to the other kids. Funny thing is other teachers (the only ones Sylvia would listen to) thought I must have been gifted — maybe even a genius — for exactly the same…

Ruth, of course, was right. We did find what we were looking for. “The Lao Babies weren’t my work, friends. They were the work of God. God wished to create a superior form of humanity to show us the way. He has done that, for here is proof.” They were standing the Sheep’s Meadow of…

He couldn’t believe it, any of it. At first he couldn’t believe his luck. When the report came back that two Lao women had thwarted an attempted attack at Central Park West, he immediately snuck away to find them. He did find them — and her. There she was, right before him once more. It…

Three men were coming at me: Jimmy, Harrigan, and Baxter. The first two came on foot, faster than I would have thought possible, Baxter on a motorcycle — far faster than that. In a flash Baxter was gone, Jimmy had fallen, Harrigan was shouting something and falling as well. And then Jimmy was gone. He…

It had started almost two decades ago. He was told only that information about his birth parents existed which he could either see or ignore as he chose. Of course he chose to see it, though for a good hour or so he actually debated ignoring it. The only reason he caved in the end…