What’s Real and What’s Not: Gish Jen on Writing Between the Factual Lines
“Finding the sweet spot between memoir and fiction”
Writer Gish Jen considers writing situations that fall somewhere between memoir—or nonfiction—and fiction: “Might the author hope that his or her account, to whatever genre it belongs, will move the reader in a way that mere fact cannot?”
Killjoy in the Machine: Why do so many people use AI to cheat at fun?
It’s one thing to use ChatGPT to cheat at things you’d rather not do: homework, work-work. Or when it involves a reward like a good grade or a cash prize. But to cheat your way through leisure activities, especially ones you pay to do?
I’ve read and thought a lot about artificial intelligence (AI) and how people are adopting it. But, I must admit, this is one question that never entered my mind.
8 Utopian Fiction Novels to Get You Through These Dystopian Times
The last several years have sparked much discussion about dystopian fiction, which presents societies that are repressive, authoritarian, and manipulative. The opposite of dystopia is utopia, “an imagined country, or world, where humans live peaceably, equably, and without strife.”
“In essence, utopian novels hold a dual purpose—to entertain with a good story, and to critique our current views and values by way of contrast to a fictional idyll,” Chris Wheatley tells us. Here Wheatley recommends eight utopian novels to pick up after 1984 and The Handmaid’s Tale have completely wrung you out.
The Trauma Behind the “Good Old Days”: Christina Henry on the Dark Trap of Nostalgia in Fiction
“Exploring Uneasy Pasts in Ray Bradbury, Daphne du Maurier, and More”
“The good old days”:
The assumption, always, is that the past was nothing but less complicated times, bathed in golden light. People smiled at their neighbors. Children scampered on the sidewalk and played stickball in the street. Nothing bad ever happened and the world was easy to understand.
Of course, nothing could be farther from the truth: “the past was filled with war and disease and injustice and unrest and endless variations of person-to-person harm but nobody wants to remember that.” Novelist Christina Henry looks at how Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, and her own recent novel The Place Where They Buried Your Heart dispel the nostalgic vision of a past that never really existed.
The Lost Ending of “Gaslight” That You Didn’t Know You Needed
We all know that the currently popular term gaslighting comes from the film Gaslight and means trying to fool people by convincing them that they’re crazy and that what seems to be happening isn’t really happening at all. But here Nora Gilbert has dug deep into the annals of cinematic history and discovered references to a different version of the story in which the presumably deceived woman triumphs by asserting that she knows exactly what’s really going on.
“One of my primary aims in writing this essay is to share this lost Gaslight ending with as many people as possible,” Gilbert writes. “In this, my new favorite ending of Gaslight, the wife’s savvy ability to read the room—to correctly interpret what the lights are ‘telling’ her—gives her the courage and resolve to reclaim the perceptual and oratory powers that her husband has so violently wrenched away from her.”
Prologues That Work and Why
Jane Friedman offers some examples of well done novel prologues that “intrigue readers and ignite interest in the story to come.” She includes some questions that novelists considering the use of a prologue should ask themselves.
10 Books That Refuse to Dramatize or Sanitize Mental Illness
“These authors resist turning mental illness into a metaphor or exotic spectacle”
This is a topic I’m particularly interested in. It’s so easy to use mental illness as a single, character-defining trope. But, Fredrik Deboer argues,”the rhythms of psychiatric suffering are nothing like the tidy arcs editors prefer.”
The books on this list—some fiction, some memoir, some reportage—are my picks for those rare titles that make a noble attempt at negotiating the gap between interior illness and exterior narrative. They don’t sanitize the disorientation, the self-doubt, the breakdowns that follow breakdowns; they resist turning mental illness into a metaphor or exotic spectacle.
11 Mystery Novels That Explore the Power of Rumors and Gossip
Novelist Lauren Oliver examines novels in which “the public narrative—the ‘facts’ that are circulated—are more powerful than the actual truth.” In these novels “gossip shapes public perception, advances or stymies investigations, and even, occasionally, points to the truth.”
11 Everyday Words That Were Coined in Sci-Fi Stories
“Science fiction is a particularly bountiful genre for the introduction of new words, in large part because authors come up with unique and otherworldly terms to describe their sci-fi worlds,” Lorna Wallace tells us. Here she explains the origins of terms such as robot, grok, and metaverse that began life in science fiction but have since become common.
© 2025 by Mary Daniels Brown
