Ultimately, a writer needs to shed self-restraint and be at least slightly anti-social to succeed, and hope those they know are understanding.
At the New Statesman, Oliver Farry delves into the wide variety of ways to offend people through writing, from vengefully crafting real people into unflattering characters to accidentally causing your mom to worry where she went wrong with you.
Claire Burgess’s short fiction has appeared in Third Coast, Hunger Mountain, and PANK online, among others. Her stories have received special mentions in the Pushcart Prize and Best American anthologies, but haven’t actually made it into one yet. She’s a graduate of the Vanderbilt University MFA program, where she co-founded Nashville Review. She lives in Pittsburgh by way of the deep South and says things on Twitter @Clairabou_.
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