Cutthroat department politics leave a young English professor in danger of losing his job and falling into obscurity. To save himself, he seizes on a playful lie that soon spirals far out of his control.

When a Soviet state official attempts to coerce a celebrated poet into apologizing for a political joke he made, the official gets a taste of his own predatory medicine at the hand of the poet's vengeful wife.

A man recalls his intimate friendship with his former English professor, who resolved to fuel his unsatisfied desire for playwriting during the time they were apart. In their reunion decades later, instead of the brilliant play he promised, the professor shows his former student a disturbing product of his mental instability.

A man wholeheartedly agrees with a columnist in a recent paper about creating an amendment to abolish same-sex marriage, however, he takes it one step further: he suggest they also abolish "samish-sex" relationships, wherein overly feminine men date overly masculine women.

A writing critic reviews the construction of Charles Chesnutt’s stories and how to write surfiction.

When an art gallery owner in Paris decides to bring an old, dead painter back into popularity, he must first deal with the painter’s fascist beliefs and manipulative widow.

A graduate student finds himself embroiled in a strange sort of psychological game after he agrees to write a paper for another well-off student.

In his new job as an English professor, Tarzan finds himself annoyed by his students, hounded by his department chair, and alienated by the world around him, with solace only from his girlfriend Jane. Naturally, hijinks ensue.

An overweight journalist navigates a strange friendship with a legendary writer and finds his life curiously entwined with one of the writer's students, a fiery young girl.

In the late 90s, a woman moves from New York to LA to teach part time at an art school. As she becomes disillusioned with the art world, she finds a dominant partner and turns to BDSM to ground herself in the empty landscape.