Short Forms: No Stepping Stone

I have done my beloved short forms an injustice. And I’ve led you, my readers, to believe that poems, short stories, and novellas are simply stops on the way to the writing world’s holy grail: novels. This column, Writing Small, is an exploration into this near-mystical thing called writing. My aim is to plumb others’… Read more »

What is a Verse Novel?

What makes something a verse novel?  Simply speaking, a verse novel (or novel in verse) is exactly what the name implies: a novel that is told in verse rather than prose. It’s a bit more complicated than that, though.  Why aren’t works like Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid called epic poems and not… Read more »