• Introduction
• Michael Cunningham - A Bottomless Fascination with the Process Itself
• Edwidge Danticat - You Have to Live Your Characters’ Lives with Them
• Mary Gaitskill - I’ve Worked Very Alone and Very Privately
• Myla Goldberg - Moving through the Language on the Page
• Ha Jin - Making the Sentences Fresh
• Bret Anthony Johnston - There Is an Unassailable Victory in the Very Telling of a Story
• Edward P. Jones - The Image You Woke Up With
• lê thi diem thúy - Writing Certain Experiences into the Language
• Chang-rae Lee - The Drama of Consciousness
• Jonathan Lethem - Discovering the Story Word by Word
• Alice Mattison - My Poems Began to Get More Like Stories
• Rick Moody - When You See a Rule, Break It
• Nancy Rawles - I Try to Write Rhythmically
• Marilynne Robinson - An Intensifier of Experience
• Donna Tartt - Character Is the Very Lifeblood of Fiction
• Mary Yukari Waters - Snatching at Random Bits of Light
• Bibliography