A catalog of the tools different alien species use to read and write, leading to fundamental questions about what it means to make patterns of knowledge against the noise of the universe.

When a serial writer decides that he can’t take more of his monotonous life, he destroys his copywriter and leaves his domestic prison to protest the rise of the machines.

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

A minorly successful writer allows his insecurities to drive him to dramatic actions.

A writer arrives at an eerie residency near a lake where she camped with her Girl Scout troop as a child. The writer revisits a past trauma at the hands of the other Girl Scouts and comes to conclusions about what it is to reside in one's own mind. Along the way, she navigates a mysterious illness, a fellow resident whose identity and words are impossible to remember, and the appearance of a severed rabbit on her doorstep.

A creative writing teacher sits through a conference with one his favorite students. He takes us on a journey through the characters in the story, and in his life.

A dying human author travels to a foreign planet to die, but meets a young girl who he begins to teach the art and beauty of storytelling.

Passive and easily satisfied, Roger spends his days managing his secondhand bookstore The Pleiade. He worships modernist classics without fully reading them, he’s gregarious but seldom invited to dinner, and he types novel after novel methodically, but all are rejected. He passes seasons of love and loss in unfailing, impassive routine.

In a realistic sci-fi world, a mystery writer nurtures his robot servant's interest in becoming a writer as well, paying for a series of expensive upgrades such that the robot can understand spelling, grammar, plot, human behavior, and humor. However, when the robot's talent threatens to surpass his own, the egotistical writer demands the robot's mind be restored to its original state.

A college student's somewhat pathetic alcoholic uncle regales him and his mother with a tale of how a famous skywriter meddled with his life and love.