(Don’t) Stop Me If You’ve Heard This Before: and Other Essays on Writing Fiction

Short-story writer Turchi (creative writing, Univ. of Houston) pens an insightful new essay collection, his third book on the craft of fiction (after A Muse & a Maze and Maps of the Imagination). Here Turchi goes beyond the basics to discuss more challenging facets of fiction writing that have arisen in his work with students. These include: power dynamics among characters, exposition, images and motifs, digression, narrative distance, characters that tell stories, and setting a story in motion. A working knowledge of these concepts is extremely beneficial, and Turchi mines a wealth of literary examples to make his points. Well-known short story writers such as Anton Chekhov, Andre Dubus, Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Allan Poe, Katherine Anne Porter, and J.D. Salinger are represented, as well as contemporary fiction authors Toni Morrison, Colson Whitehead, and (perhaps less familiar) Jai Chakrabarti, Olga Tokarczuk, and Yoko Ogawa. Turchi also has a knack for weaving engaging personal stories, mythology, plays, politics, and pop culture references into his essays.