A young couple obsessed with syntax sets off to meet their favorite author.

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

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.

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

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

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.

An accomplished but ineffectual columnist searches for fulfillment, until a death in the family causes him to question the family he took for granted.

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.

A professor tries to convey to his students the magnitude of the most perfectly crafted poem ever written in the English language: “Lycidas.”

Upon returning to Paris after a decade-long hiatus wandering the French countryside and writing an epic, a poet encounters an enigmatic young woman who believes he is a god and wants to be his disciple,