Isabel Kaplan reflects on writing her fiction thesis and shares an excerpt from her work.

Has sufficient attention been paid to the art of writing sex scenes? Are authors unaware of the wealth of writing tips to be gleaned from Cosmopolitan magazine’s monthly Red Hot Reads?

Writing is like sex: The best way to learn is by doing.

We have inadvertently developed poetic skills by crystallizing and condensing our ideas.

I am flattered that such a distinguished and accomplished literary scholar as Professor Marjorie Perloff has commented on my recent column, “In Someone Else’s Words.”

Any self-respecting literary scholar, writer, or aspiring writer should know better.

Being raped altered and shaped my mother’s identity, and I always knew that.

In Thomas McGuane’s tenth novel, “Driving on the Rim,” a friend of the narrator suggests that he “get some advice about operating on a somewhat different plane. Neither I nor anyone else in town can figure out where the hell you’re coming from.”

In Jean Genet’s “The Balcony,” sex is theater and power is a performance.

Rebecca D. Costa is a sociobiologist whose first book, “The Watchman’s Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction,” explores current ...