Jennings, Brittany

Tim O’Brien’s characters occupy a world in which narrative has the power to consume, to unite, and to heal. Stories are repeated and memories revisited, until accuracy sometimes gives way to isolation, fear, and despair, until the only way forward is to keep telling them. “The best of these stories are memory as prophecy,” writes Richard … Read more

The voice in a Steve Almond story or essay or blog post is unmistakable, shaped by a tone typically anchored in dry wit, and a sharp, hungry intelligence that seems capable of taking us anywhere. The world, as Almond observes it, is at once hilarious and pathetic, sad and intensely beautiful. And it’s his willingness to … Read more

“I believe that art is the highest expression of the human spirit,” Joyce Carol Oates declares in The Faith of a Writer, “I believe that we yearn to transcend the merely finite and ephemeral; to participate in something mysterious and communal called ‘culture.’” Oates has dedicated herself to life as an artist. She’s produced over … Read more