The Marvelous Paragraph Project with Sarah Stone

Elizabeth McCracken, The Hero of this Book and A Long Game: Notes on Writing Fiction (plus Marriage to the Sea preorders and my upcoming…

It somehow feels very like Elizabeth McCracken to write a craft/process book about writing that began as the footnotes of an earlier draft of another…

Feb 26 • Sarah Stone

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January 2026

Jenny Offill, Lauren Elkin, and Marin Kosut, On Being (or Not Being) an Art Monster

The holidays are over, like a dream, and “real life” has started up again, like a very different dream.

Jan 7 • Sarah Stone

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November 2025

Zadie Smith, Dead and Alive: Essays (plus great books by friends and cozy escape fiction)

Here is a false memory: one of my writing instructors once said, “You do not need to find an organizing principle for your work.

Nov 26, 2025 • Sarah Stone

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October 2025

Christine Hale: On Kevin McIlvoy’s Willingness, and Handing It On

(Guest post by Christine Hale)

Oct 14, 2025 • Sarah Stone

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September 2025

Hilary Zaid, Forget I Told You This (and new books by Joan Silber, Marisa Silver, and David Haynes)

Upstairs, twinkle lights garlanded the doorways of makeshift lofts, thin walls draped with heavy carpets to muffle noise.

Sep 3, 2025 • Sarah Stone

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July 2025

Willa Cather, The Troll Garden

A surprising number of us have our own, apparently mostly secret, relationship with Willa Cather.

Jul 16, 2025 • Sarah Stone

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May 2025

A.S. Byatt, The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye: Five Fairy Stories (plus Marriage to the Sea has a cover!)

A few weeks ago, I finally watched the film Three Thousand Years of Longing and afterward reread the source, A.S.

May 7, 2025 • Sarah Stone

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April 2025

Mohsin Hamid, Exit West: A Novel

In the last month or so, I finally read Percival Everett’s James (just as great as everyone says—couldn’t stop reading it, wept over the ending, etc…

Apr 22, 2025 • Sarah Stone

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March 2025

Yoko Ogawa, The Memory Police

Yoko Ogawa has said that the reason she became a writer was reading the diary of Anne Frank as a teenager.

Mar 26, 2025 • Sarah Stone

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January 2025

Michael Cunningham, Specimen Days: Tenderness

Right now, I’m rereading Michael Cunningham’s Specimen Days, one of my favorite books, because it is full of tenderness for human beings.

Jan 29, 2025 • Sarah Stone

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December 2024

Sabrina Orah Mark, Happily: A Personal History—with Fairy Tales

At the end of this year, which had a truly Gothic amount of plot in it, we’re anticipating more wildness in the months to come.

Dec 31, 2024 • Sarah Stone

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November 2024

Ali Smith, Autumn

As we feel our way into how to adjust to our new circumstances, wherever we are in the process, I’m appreciating the pieces that writers are sharing to…

Nov 27, 2024 • Sarah Stone

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