Staff Picks: Tell Me A Riddle 3

“I Stand Here Ironing” is a story about a working mother, but to call it that — even to call it the best story ever written about a working mother — feels reductive. Work-life balance may now be the stuff of Atlantic cover stories and Lean In, but in 1961, exploring it in fiction was a downright radical act.

Tillie Olsen and the Writing of Fiction 3

Tillie Olsen’s stories turned me into a fiction writer, as if they pointed to a door in what had looked like a blank wall — a door to which, as it turned out, I owned a key.

Remembering Tillie Olsen 1