Telephone
If you've ever worked in an office you know that gossip goes around faster than anyone can keep track of. But what happens when rumors get out of hand and someone's job ends up on the line?
Poetry Classics: The Road Not Taken, By Robert Frost
Frost's biographer Lawrance Thompson suggests that the poem's narrator is "one who habitually wastes energy in regretting any choice made: belatedly but wistfully he sighs over the attractive alternative rejected". Thompson also says that when introducing the poem in readings, Frost would say that the speaker was based on his friend Edward Thomas. In Frost's words, Thomas was "a person who, whichever road he went, would be sorry he didn't go the other"
Deadly Impressions
After moving into an older home, a young couple discovers that the children of previous owners have left their hand prints and names in cement, merely a curiosity until they discover their own daughter’s impression.
Short Story Classics: Harrison Bergeron, By Kurt Vonnegut
"Harrison Bergeron" is a satirical and dystopian science-fiction short story written by Kurt Vonnegut and first published in October 1961. Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, the story was republished in the author's Welcome to the Monkey House collection in 1968.
Poetry Classics: Caedmon’s Hymn
The so-called Venerable Bede (c. 673-735) embeds this Anglo-Saxon hymn and the legend of its creation within his Latin text, An Ecclesiastical History of the English People, a book that describes the spread of Christianity in England. The hymn itself was composed in the mid- or late-7th century and so is the earliest surviving Old English poem.
Poetry Classics: Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening, By Robert Frost
A beloved and famous classic poem by Robert Frost.
Couch
When a man wakes up in his empty bed he assumes his wife is sleeping on the couch. But is that really the case?
All Summer In A Day, By Ray Bradbury
A group of schoolchildren live on Venus where the Sun is visible for only two hours every seven years.
Poetry Classics: Opportunity, By John James Ingalls
Opportunity, it is famously said, knocks only once. John James Ingalls, a U.S. Senator from Kansas, penned an ode to this simple but profound principle in the mid-19th century, and it was said to have become Theodore Roosevelt’s very favorite poem.
Poetry Classics: Ode 1.11, By Horace
Made famous by Robin Williams’ inspiring literature teacher in the film Dead Poets Society, Horace’s Ode 1.11 contains one of the most quoted Latin phrases — Carpe diem, or “Seize the day!”
Short Story Classics: Hills Like White Elephants, By Ernest Hemingway
This short story from Hemingway’s 1927 collection Men Without Women takes place in Spain’s Ebro Valley, and concerns two characters on the verge of a life-changing decision – although they are having trouble talking about it.
Roadside Flowerbed
We bring back a past feature writer, Ashleigh Hatter, with this incredible poem about the past and how it fades away over time.
Poetry Classics: The Iron Heel, By Jack London
The Iron Heel is a dystopian novel by American writer Jack London, first published in 1908. Generally considered to be "the earliest of the modern dystopian" fiction, it chronicles the rise of an oligarchic tyranny in the United States. This is a poem inside the book which is a take on Jack London's view of life.
Poetry Classics: Character Of The Happy Warrior, By William Wordsworth
What makes a good soldier? What qualities are attendant in a “happy warrior”? These are the questions that William Wordsworth lays out in the opening line of one of his most famous poems, and then proceeds to answer in the lines that follow.
The Copy Editing and Proofreading Checklist All Writers Need, From Writer’s Digest
Whether you are hired as a copy editor or a proofreader on a project or you’re revising your own work, you want to make sure you don’t miss anything. Here are 26 important items you should check when copy editing and proofreading your manuscript.
Short Story Classics: The Shoemaker And The Devil, By Anton Chekhov
The Shoemaker and the Devil was published by Anton Chekhov in 1888. "How splendid it would be if the rich, little by little, changed into beggars having nothing, and he, a poor shoemaker, were to become rich, and were to lord it over some other poor shoemaker on Christmas Eve."
Poetry Classics: Ulysses, By Alfred Lord Tennyson
"Ulysses" is a poem in blank verse by the Victorian poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, written in 1833 and published in 1842 in his well-received second volume of poetry. An oft-quoted poem, it is popularly used to illustrate the dramatic monologue form.
