Why do we care about characters? Is literary empathy different from the kind of empathy we may have in our everyday lives? In today's episode of the Quarantine Quill, guest host and Australian writer Jade Maitre looks at the psychology of emotions in fiction, and turns to the Sanskrit concept of Rasa for accessing archetypal emotional states in writing.

Mentioned in this episode: Keith Oatley, The Passionate Muse: Exploring Emotion in Stories (2012).

The Quarantine Quill is a creative writing podcast hosted by Anna Polonyi with the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking. The podcast will be bringing you a daily writing tip and prompt for as long as PICT's creative writing events are on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Music: Carole Cassier.

For more details on the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking, visit parisinstitute.org

What's the point of collecting new, complicated words if putting them in your writing risks alienating readers—or at the very least, sending them to the dictionary? In today's episode of the Quarantine Quill, we turn to Pulitzer-prize winning writer and teacher Paul Harding for advice on how to get away with that new, strange word (ex. hapax legemonenon) you're itching to use.

The Quarantine Quill is a creative writing podcast hosted by Anna Polonyi with the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking. The podcast will be bringing you a daily writing tip and prompt for as long as PICT's creative writing events are on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Featured guests: Emily Monaco, Linda Healey, Gauhar Mukaman.

Mentioned in this episode: Paul Harding, Lydia Davis, "French Lesson I: Le Meurtre", The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (2011).

Music: Carole Cassier.

For more details on the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking, visit parisinstitute.org

“What the young writer needs to do, of course, is study sentences, consciously experiment with them," says John Gardner in The Art of Fiction. We all know it's important to vary sentence length, but how to go about it? Episode 18 of the Quarantine Quill brings you an auditory experiment to help change things up.

The Quarantine Quill is a creative writing podcast hosted by Anna Polonyi with the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking. The podcast will be bringing you a daily writing tip and prompt for as long as PICT's creative writing events are on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Mentioned in this episode: John Gardner, The Art of Fiction (1983).

Music: Carole Cassier.

For more details on the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking, visit parisinstitute.org

"Poets are interested mostly in death and commas," the poet Carolyn Kizer once said. The Portuguese Nobel Laureate José Saramago famously disregarded conventional norms of punctuation. Can you?

The Quarantine Quill is a creative writing podcast hosted by Anna Polonyi with the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking. The podcast will be bringing you a daily writing tip and prompt for as long as PICT's creative writing events are on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Mentioned in this episode: Carolyn Kizer, José Saramago's obituary in The Economist (2010), e e cummings, Cormac McCarthy, James Joyce's Ulysses, Ursula K. Leguin's Steering the Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story.

Music: Carole Cassier.

For more details on the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking, visit parisinstitute.org

Take a break from your phone. Don't tell people what you're working on. Look out the window and keep looking. In this episode of the Quarantine Quill, we turn to Iowa Writers' Workshop director Lan Samantha Chang and her twelve tips on cultivating an inner life.

The Quarantine Quill is a creative writing podcast hosted by Anna Polonyi with the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking. The podcast will be bringing you a daily writing tip and prompt for as long as PICT's creative writing events are on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Mentioned in this episode: Lan Samantha Chang's 2016 Napa Valley Writers' Conference lecture, adapted for an article called "Writers, Protect Your Inner Life" on Literary Hub.

Featured guest: Ellen McQueen from Paris, France.

Music: Carole Cassier.

For more details on the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking, visit parisinstitute.org

What's your "terrible fish"? Guest host Sanjena Sathian, founder of the Bombay Writers' Workshop, talks about the Russian formalist concept "ostranenie" or defamiliarisation, urging us to find the strange in the familiar. We wrap up with a multi-step writing exercise inspired by Sylvia Plath's persona poem "Mirror".

The Quarantine Quill is a creative writing podcast improvised by Anna Polonyi with the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking. The podcast will be bringing you a daily writing tip and prompt for as long as PICT's creative writing events are on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Mentioned in this episode: Viktor Schlovsky, "Art as Technique" (1917), Sylvia Plath, "Mirror" (1961).

Music: Carole Cassier.

For more details on the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking, visit parisinstitute.org

Welcome to the Quarantine Quill, a creative writing podcast improvised by Anna Polonyi with the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking. The podcast will be bringing you a daily writing tip and prompt for as long as PICT's creative writing events are on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Music and Ideas When Anna Draws a Blank: Carole Cassier.

For more details on the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking, visit parisinstitute.org

Welcome to the Quarantine Quill, a creative writing podcast improvised by Anna Polonyi with the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking. The podcast will be bringing you a daily writing tip and prompt for as long as PICT's creative writing events are on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Featured guest: Gauhar Mukaman from Kazakhstan.

Mentioned in this episode: Hannah Gadsby, Nanette (2018).

Music and Ideas When Anna Draws a Blank: Carole Cassier.

For more details on the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking, visit parisinstitute.org

Welcome to the Quarantine Quill, a creative writing podcast improvised by Anna Polonyi with the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking. The podcast will be bringing you a daily writing tip and prompt for as long as PICT's creative writing events are on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Featured guest: Pierre Hawley from Antigua and Barbuda.

Mentioned in this episode: Charles Baxter, The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot (2007).

Music: Carole Cassier.

For more details on the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking, visit parisinstitute.org

Welcome to the Quarantine Quill, a creative writing podcast improvised by Anna Polonyi with the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking. The podcast will be bringing you a daily writing tip and prompt for as long as PICT's creative writing events are on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Mentioned in this episode: Fran Cooper, The Two Houses (2018).

Music: Carole Cassier.

For more details on the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking, visit parisinstitute.org