"These seventeen essays by celebrated writers of color start a more inclusive conversation about storytelling and encourage readers and writers to re-evaluate the codes and conventions that have shaped their assumptions about how fiction should be written. Edited by Deepa Anappara, author of Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, and Taymour Soomro, author of Other Names for Love, this anthology features writers from around the world, from a diversity of...

"Searching and erudite new essays on writing from the author of Burning Down the House. Charles Baxter's new collection of essays, Wonderlands, joins his other works of nonfiction, Burning Down the House and The Art of Subtext. In the mold of those books, Baxter shares years of wisdom and reflection on what makes fiction work, including essays that were first given as craft talks at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. The essays here range from brilliant...

"With novels by Toni Morrison, Colson Whitehead, Philip Roth, Julia Alvarez, and Viet Thanh Nguyen, historical fiction has become a, if not the dominant genre in literary fiction. In the 1980s and 1990s, the American literary field fundamentally reorganized itself around historical fiction and the cultural, pedagogical, and political value of history. This decisive turn toward the past has both motivated, and been motivated by, the increasing recognition...

"What is it about Elena Ferrante's writing, especially her masterwork Neapolitan Novels, that resonates so deeply with millions of readers, making this Italian author who writes under a pseudonym with absolutely no "platform" an international sensation? Brilliantly addressing issues such as class struggle, female friendship, women's autonomy, and literary creation itself, Ferrante's hyperrealist, intense storytelling is a saga of a highly specific...

To be dystopian, a work needs to foreground the oppressive society in which it is set, using that setting as an opportunity to comment in a critical way on some other society, typically that of the author and/or the audience. In other worlds, the bleak dystopian world should encourage the reader or viewer to think critically about it, then to transfer this critical thinking to his or her own world. This volume in the Critical Insights series presents...