Three propositions : Hooey, Dewey, and Loony / Marvin Bell -- Don't just sit there : writing as a polymorphous perverse pleasure / Rosellen Brown -- Judgment : an essay / Nicholas Delbanco -- What's in a name? / Stanley Elkin -- Reading / Richard Ford -- A diarist on diarists / Gail Godwin -- Taking what you need, giving what you can : the writer as student and teacher / David Huddle -- Against metaphor / T.R. Hummer -- Getting started / John Irving -- My grandmother on my shoulder / Erica Jong -- The prose sublime : or, the deep sense of things belonging together, inexplicably / Donald Justice -- Making a case : or, "where are you coming from?" / Sydney Lea -- Part of the problem / Philip Levine -- The soul of brevity / William Matthews -- Beginnings / Paul Mariani -- Excerpts from a journal / Joyce Carol Oates -- The magic show / Tim O'Brien -- On wording / Robert Pack -- On being prolific / Jay Parini -- Writing about writing / Linda Pastan -- Learning from Chekhov / Francine Prose -- Remembrance of tense past / Lynne Sharon Schwartz -- On tone / Ellen Bryant Voigt -- Close encounters of the story kind / Nancy Willard -- Twenty