All sixteen pages of this quarterly newsletter are packed full of useful techniques, informed perspectives, and inspired nudges. In Writers Ask Issue 40, you'll hear from dozens of accomplished writers and writing teachers on these topics: Approaches to Writing, Use of Language, Character, How Reading Shapes Writing, Writing as Responsibility. You'll also get a special Last Page Focus by Michelle Richmond: On Accidentally Finding Your Way.

I don’t make notes, and I think if I did I would find so much comfort in them that I wouldn’t write the book.
—Ann Patchett, interviewed by Jennifer Levasseur and Kevin Rabalais

How do I integrate what I’ve learned into my own life? How do I make meaning of the experience of living in this world? That’s what I think fiction can help us do.—Julia Alvarez, interviewed by Robert Birnbaum

Being a fiction writer is a search for nuance. It’s this desire to understand all sides.
—Edwidge Danticat, interviewed by Sarah Anne Johnson

I try to reduce the historical element of my work. I focus on human psychology and human experience. I use history only as a context. On the other hand, I have to make the experiences of my characters as concrete and as historical as possible. Only through history can history be conquered. We cannot do anything in a vacuum.
—Ha Jin, interviewed by Jennifer Levasseur and Kevin Rabalais