We believe students and readers everywhere deserve a great and free modern library, inside of which they can get deliriously, entertainingly, profoundly lost. And found.

Stories

Narrative By Hand
By Hand
by Robert Olen Butler
The handwritten first draft pages of Robert Olen Butler's first novel.
Features
Letters to a Young Writer
by Robert Olen Butler
Revision is not a sanction to get the head and the will involved.
Narrative By Hand
By Hand
by Liza Donnelly
Liza Donnelly
Narrative 10
Narrative 10
by Liza Donnelly
Best part of the day? The part when I come up with an idea for a cartoon.
Narrative By Hand
By Hand
by Gail Godwin
Words and sketches from Gail Godwin’s upcoming novel Flora.
Narrative By Hand
By Hand
by William Butler Yeats
Handwritten drafts of “Byzantium,” “Easter, 1916,” and other poems.
Narrative By Hand
By Hand
by Penelope Fitzgerald
Manuscript pages from The Blue Flower and The Bookshop.
Story of the Week
Elements of Style
by Various Authors
The rich man adorns himself and the elegant man gets dressed.
Story of the Week
For the Love of the Game
by Various Authors
Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.
Story of the Week
How I Feel about You
by Various Authors
It was more fun to get drunk with a friend than with a lover.
Story of the Week
Love among the Stacks
by Various Authors
The library is inhabited by spirits that come out of the pages at night.
Story of the Week
Love Is . . .
by Various Authors
“I love you” is always a quotation. You did not say it first.
Story of the Week
Money, Money, Money
by Various Authors
If the kind hearts had fat purses, how much better everything would go!
Story of the Week
Of Kin and Kind
by Various Authors
Having a sister or a friend is like sitting at night in a lighted house.
Story of the Week
On Livelihood
by Various Authors
“I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early.”
Features
Forward Together
by
A powerful antidote to indifference, cynicism, and polarity.
Features
Letters to a Young Writer
by Louis Menand
The main thing a poet tries to do, above all things, is to write a poem.
Features
Letters to a Young Writer
by Lan Samantha Chang
In the best fiction, there exists a palpable sense of discovery.
Features
Letters to a Young Writer
by Julianna Baggott
We lived below the poverty level. I wasn’t allowed to desire objects.
Features
Letters to a Young Writer
by T. C. Boyle
Not a single environmentalist holds out much hope for the future.
Features
Letters to a Young Writer
by Richard Bausch
Features
Letters to a Young Writer
by Rick Bass
Features
Letters to a Young Writer
by Ann Beattie
What can be done to interest a younger audience in fiction?
Features
Letters to a Young Writer
by Carol Edgarian
The best writers talk a story the way they put it down on the page.
Story of the Week
Maxims
by François Duc de La Rochefoucauld
There are certain defects which well mounted glitter like virtue itself.
Features
Memorable Days
by James Salter and Robert Phelps
A letter is like a poem, showing the marks of an unwilling composer.
Story of the Week
Musings
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Heaven preserve me from the Epidemic of a Proud Ignorance!
Nonfiction
My Dear Friend and Yours
by George Saunders
“What would Toby do?” is a question that often appears in my mind.
Narrative 10
Narrative 10
by Ann Packer
It helped me free myself from a longtime source of unhappiness.
Narrative on the Road
Nick and Nora’s Day at Sea
by Richard Smith
Gresham’s law. Stupid talk chases smart talk out of circulation.