Essays and Culture

Explore what is happening in literature and what happened. Try out tools and literary games designed to make you have fun.

Articles & Essays Podcasts Famous Readings Writing Tools
ARTICLES & ESSAYS
PODCASTS
This American Life
Storytelling
This American Life

The original. Ira Glass turns true stories into small films for your ears. Winner of the first Pulitzer Prize awarded to a podcast.

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The Paris Review Podcast
Literary Interviews
The Paris Review Podcast

Readings, interviews and archival material from the most important literary magazine in the world. Essential for anyone serious about fiction.

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At Your Service
Culture & Books
At Your Service — Dua Lipa

Long-form conversations with writers, thinkers and artists — from Elif Batuman to Ottessa Moshfegh. Genuinely literary.

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See all ten podcasts →
FAMOUS READINGS Allen Ginsberg reading Howl 1955 Browse all famous readings →
WRITING TOOLS
Quiz · 10 questions
Find out who you write like
Answer ten questions about your instincts on the page and find out which literary giant your style most resembles. Carver, Hemingway, Hempel, Chekhov, Paley, Beckett or Kafka.
Take the quiz →
Generator · Hundreds of prompts
Prompt and write tonight
A flash fiction prompt generator built around the minimalist tradition. Every prompt has a formal constraint, a setting, and a word limit.
Generate a prompt →
Essay · Constraint-based prompts
The best writing prompts for flash fiction
Specific, constraint-based prompts grounded in the minimalist tradition. Each includes a formal restriction and a suggested approach.
Read the prompts →
Database · 32 journals
Find the right literary magazine
Filter 32 literary journals by pay rate, response time, prestige and form. Built for flash fiction and prose poetry submissions.
Search journals →
Workshop · AI analysis
Workshop your flash fiction
Paste your draft and get a compression score, style analysis, an ending critique and specific line-level notes.
Paste your draft →
Poetry tool · AI form shaper
Shape Your Words
Paste a rough idea or draft. Choose a form — haiku, sonnet, villanelle, limerick, or free verse — and the tool reshapes your language into it.
Shape your words →

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