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Paradise Now directed by Hany Abu-Assad is the kind of film that reminds one that the story we hear in western media is but one story, and an aggregate political one at that. It is not the story of individuals–of the people living in the midst of daily conflict, of occupation, oppression, and fear. This [...]

We kicked off a unit on microfiction in my creative writing class the other day. This segment of the course will be focused heavily on the idea of revision–sometimes arbitrary, always gut-wrenching. The process we’re following is one I’ve been developing with a colleague of mine based on the film The Five Obstructions. The very [...]

My fiction writing students and I often argue around the matter of what makes for a story. The debate usually begins when I encounter either one of two stances on the issue: 1) sometimes nothing happens in a story, there is no particular conflict, and the characters never change, or 2) everyday life is boring, [...]