Ultimately, I realized I was writing a story about three people who are trapped in different versions of hell: the three damnations in the title. None of the three has the strength of character to break free.

There’s evidence that quite a few women disguised themselves and took the seas. Fast Ships, Black Sails included quite a few stories about women pirates. Should I bring up Cutthroat Island? No?

What strikes me now is how much like Pratt I am, in a way—devoted to hardening my shell of ignorance, and operating within it, even if it isn’t so small as his.

As the story went through revisions, I reworked some of the lessons (and sometimes changed them back again!) to be sillier and less predictable. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was tempting to fall back on “true love conquers all.”

The problem Donna, Russ, and Piggy have is that they live in a world which is, so far as they can tell, entirely devoid of magic. Also, they’re adolescents, which amounts to the same thing.

In this week’s Author Spotlight, we ask author Laura Anne Gilman to tell us a bit about her story for Fantasy, “Crossroads.” What inspired your story “Crossroads”? Could you tell us about the process of writing it? The story, or at least the opening lines, came out of a writing assignment that I gave my class during […]

I felt rather presumptuous using the word “pragmatism” in the story the title. I know it has a bunch of baggage. My research has been in other areas of the discipline.

People who try and protect their children from the world by enforced ignorance strike me as blinding themselves in the most tragic of ways.

I’m usually borrowing from more than one source. Maybe I ought to try reworking a fairy tale while sticking strictly to one narrative.

Whenever I go back to Brooklyn I think of my wolves, now. I think that’s my favorite part of this piece, how it changed the way I saw the city.