An old linguistics researcher is ousted from his university position on the frontier of a small island he acculturated. Upon his return home, he begins to believe that he and his life's work are marginal.

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

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

A Los Angeles speech pathologist is assigned to the case of a presumably mentally-ill woman who speaks in gibberish that turns out to be Old English. When the woman disappears, deciphering her mysterious writing leads the pathologist to wonder if she has stumbled across a time traveler.

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

A daughter and a mother wonder what the lesson of their story is.

Despite her friction with other teachers, a young student shows exceptional talent in the writing field and is encouraged by her favorite teacher to continue to kindle that passion and become a writer someday.

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.

An American student sent to study at Oxford University undergoes a mental crisis as he wavers between fitting in with his English peers and defining himself as an American who deeply loves the Midwest.