Fiction Craft Essays

Gerry Stanek discusses how James Baldwin uses Jazz in his classic short story, "Sonny's Blues" to create a sense of empathy with a character who is struggle to overcome addiction and, in so doing, he reveals his character's humanity in a new way.

Anne Elliott analyzes Luis Alberto Urrea's short story, “Mountains Without Number" to reveal how he uses free indirect style, a technique, which, according to David Jauss, “allows the narrator to be simultaneously outside and inside a character…because he is giving us the character’s thoughts in the character’s language, not his own.”