The couch pillows were reproducing at an alarming rate. There were tens, dozens, now. It would only be a matter of time until Josh himself was edged off the couch completely, out of the condo, out of the city. He would wash up somewhere awful, like Long Island, and, when he was gone, it would…

First, let me say how thrilled I am to be the September Writer in Residence here at Necessary Fiction. I have long admired, swooned over, and gasped in admiration at work published and edited here by Steve Himmer (for your consideration: Matt Baker’s A bit about Le Pue published just this week). For the past…

I want to thank Steve Himmer again for this extraordinary opportunity and experience, as Writer in Residence here at Necessary Fiction. Forgive me these fragments of thoughts below on a process I’ve been thinking about for some time. Any arguments or concurrences with these thoughts can be carried out in the comment section of this…

I’m sitting in Seattle trying not to think about my thighs. There is someone handsome sitting near me. We own the same pants. He’s wearing his right now. The way I got to Seattle was on a plane where I lied to everyone who was there. It’s not always that I lie. It’s very seldom…

I was thirteen and I couldn’t find the Herald-Tribune in Budapest, Hungary. Harmon Killebrew, Frank Howard, and Reggie Jackson were neck and neck in the home run race in the American League. If pressed at that point in my life, I would have admitted I had few thoughts in my head other than the obsessive,…

a white cloth rises above the sea. a single pulse, increasing: uncontrollable longing. waves push torrents of static towards the house. darling emerges from the water, her hair spread in curlicues across her long, white back. she lifts her hand and the waves subside. today, everything will stop. here she will stop. this is how…

The air is always too thin here. And too dry. It is too hot and too cold always. It must be the weather. It is only the weather. Somebody should hold you down still. Somebody must put their weight down on you, or you will die here. Yes, if someone would only lie on top…

Ask questions. Ask your friends and family questions. Always be prepared for the right moment to ask questions (in person, by email, by telephone, by text message, God forbid by snail mail). Why did the dog leap out the car window that time? How did Grampa actually kill himself? What was it like to make…

It feels good to think about research in fiction in conversation with Brian Kiteley, whose lyrical, tough, heartfelt novel, The River Gods, draws deeply on the landscape and history of Northampton, Massachusetts, where I find myself writing, as well. I’ve spent nine years, off and on, more or less, researching and writing Spider in a…

During the Civil War, Mathew Brady took thousands of photographs of the battle scenes and the dead after these battles. There was no technical way to publish these photos in newspapers or magazines at that time, and his plans to exhibit them did not happen in part because Americans wanted to move on from the…

June 1740, Northampton, Massachusetts. This is an excerpt from a novel, SPIDER IN A TREE. Saul and Leah are enslaved in the household of eighteenth century theologian Jonathan Edwards. Saul and Leah started bundling. They didn’t do it openly, in the manner of some English families, with the visiting suitor and the daughter of the…

She was not a shop girl or a schoolgirl or a rich girl meant to wear pearls. She was born to a normal mother and father. She was not catty or horse-faced or bug-eyed, but she did not have blue eyes and blond curls. She would never make it as a showgirl, and she did…