Aliens visit Earth in the near future to select a single work of art to represent all of humanity, but the artwork they choose shocks the world.

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

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 writer receiving feedback from a professor on their drafts is sure that the person on the other end is a man. They wrestle with their own hidden identities until the end of their literary relationship comes with an unexpected revelation.

In a near future world, a famous computerized drama director is pushed beyond his artistic limits when a random science fiction writer asks him to adapt his novel for the digital stage—for the alluring incentive of real gold payment.

After being offered a 100,000 pound advance to write a book on the twentieth century, a historian/writer struggling with depression takes to London to begin this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

On a trip to Basel, a man falls in love with a middle-aged writer’s muse, creating a love triangle destined to fall apart under the weight of the old writer’s age.

A woman grows obsessed with a single book from the time she is a young adult to her death in old age, as the book's meaning changes for her over time.

A female professor at a contemporary university remembers an old conversation with a former teacher of hers, which prompts her to reconsider her job, solitude, and love of reading.

Writing a foreword, a man reflects on his relationship to a writer and said writer's wife.