The Shell Game: Writers Play with Borrowed Forms Edited and with an introduction by Kim Adrian Foreword by Brenda Miller Postscript by Cheyenne Nimes 276 pages, paperback, $24.95 University of Nebraska Press April, 2018 Shell Games When you think about the “essay,” what comes…
The Desk I moved into my first apartment in Chicago, and became a real writer. Being a writer had certain conditions that absolutely had to be met. I needed a place—secured. I needed a desk and a chair. The desk I wanted flat and…
This survey was sent by Jenna McGuiggan to Kim Adrian, editor of The Shell Game: Writers Play with Borrowed Forms, published by the University of Nebraska Press. Except for the book’s foreword, by Brenda Miller, and the source acknowledgements, everything in this anthology has been written…
Paint Songs There I am: a child, a century after the final painting in Monet’s bridge series is finished, coloring butterfly masks with my mom and my brother on the cement front porch of my childhood home. My mother had printed and cut out…
What songs the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, although puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture. …
Dan Chaon is the author of three short story collections, including Among the Missing, which was nominated for a National Book Award, and three novels. He lives in Cleveland and teaches at Oberlin College. His latest novel Ill Will, a New York Times bestseller,…
No Words Jay was an expressive kid from the womb, a busy baby who had an adorable need to communicate endlessly. But when he was about eighteen months old, he suddenly started going from purposeful babble to a furious cyclone, flinging himself down and…