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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

A twenty-two-year-old male tutor gives various women feedback on their writing in letter form. When he quits his job, he visits one of his former correspondents for lunch at her apartment.