Great writers are always in conversation with one another, whether personally or through their work. In the stories, poems, and essays below, emerging and established literary authors respond to the writers who have inspired them, infuriated them, and defined them.
Tom Grimes
Mentor
Like a novelist who never outlines a book, I’d never plotted my future.
Andre Dubus III
My Father Was a Writer
It was the six of us: my young parents and all four of us kids.
W. S. Merwin
Letter to Ruth Stone
2013 International Zbigniew Herbert Prize
Heather Brittain Bergstrom
Reading Henry James in the Suburbs
Chris Abani
A Letter to Robert Pinsky
Tobias Wolff
Reconsidering Paul Bowles
Marvin Bell
Poem after Carlos Drummond de Andrade