
Light the Dark: Writers on Creativity, Inspiration, and the Artistic Process

“Being able to say ‘this is who I am’ when everything else feels uncertain, flimsy, prone to dissolution, may be the greatest comfort we have. Is anything more seductive, more empowering?/ To be alive is to subject oneself to the reality of being permeable/ so, while I welcome the pleasure of those moments when I feel like myself, I don’t think I w
... See moreEloghosa Osunde • A Long Talk: conversation between Eloghosa Osunde & Joshua Segun-Lean.
What I really think good writing does: It enlivens that part of us that actually believes we are in this world, right now, and that being here somehow matters.
-George Saunders
It is the possibility of our minds touching that makes writing a worthwhile endeavor at all.
Ken Liu • The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
So, trying to stay perfectly honest, let’s go ahead and ask, diagnostically: What is it, exactly, that fiction does? Well, that’s the question we’ve been asking all along, as we’ve been watching our minds read these Russian stories. We’ve been comparing the pre-reading state of our minds to the post-reading state. And that’s what fiction does: it c
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