William Stockton

Fiction writers learn to expect certain questions: “Where do you get your ideas?” and “How much of your work is autobiographical?” Both questions aim for the same information: both probe the relationship between fiction and nonfiction, the created work and lived experience. In How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, Alexander Chee, author of two previous novels The Queen of the Night and Edinburgh, addresses this relationship in a series of sixteen essays. As the title suggests, the result is partly a “how to” guide–a book that sits comfortably alongside recent works on craft like Benjamin Percy’s Thrill Me: Essays on […]