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 teacher on the Lower East side meets a friendly man with a presence resembling a dead English poet.

A teacher reminisces about all his wonderful students of the Narrative Studies courses he has taught around the world before his career comes to an end.

An American writer travels to Sophia where he meets a famous poetess. He falls in love with her and her attitude.

A man's lonely life focused on the pursuit of reason and music leaves him questioning what more there may be in the lives of other people and of religion.

As she wanders in and out of forests to escape her past and the boy she feels guilty for wanting, a woman gives birth to and abandons a child she thinks of as the physical embodiment of her sin.

A man walks with a writer around London who tells him about the novel he wrote that was lost which can never be matched in beauty by any other.

A rambunctious teenager with an inquisitive mind causes much grief for all his New England family and neighbors when he visits them in the summer of 1914, on the eve of World War I.

A writer grapples with the suicide of her longtime friend and mentor.

An aspiring poet who hones his craft through hard practice experiences an unexpected setback when his younger cousin undermines his belief that skilled art-making requires time and effort.