Practically every literate human has entertained the idea of writing a novel. For most of us the idea fades as soon as something good comes on TV. But imagine if you wrote short stories for a living. Imagine if you wrote dozens of incredible short stories over almost twenty years and became the world's most famous…

In response to our take on the tug of war over the publication of early drafts of Raymond Carver's best-known stories came a small excellent email: "As a grad student, I sat for a week in the Lilly Library at Indiana University poring over Gordon Lish's papers, after exactly what Tess Gallagher is/was/will be forever…

You know how all Raymond Carver's short stories are like, "We sat in the kitchen. It was raining. I poured another scotch. I drank it. She sat on the chair, drinking. We drank together a while"? Apparently they weren't always so minimalist. In fact, according to Raymond's widow Tess Gallagher, they were downright…