In a cozy home a stone’s throw from Sarah Scott Middle School there lives a woman who carries within her a sizeable chunk of Wabash Valley history. Though she would be the first to say her life is rather unremarkable, it is hard to take her at her word. Not knowing how much she has witnessed as a lifetime Hautean. Not knowing the things that I know about her.
For the record, coming into this interview, here is what I know: I know that her name is Claudia Fitzsimmons Fulwiler. …

Craig Stauffer does not care a lick about chess.
At least that’s what he’d like people to believe.
But for anyone who knows Stauffer, for anyone who’s ever stepped foot in his home situated a few quiet blocks away from Woodrow Wilson Junior High School, this statement is patently false. After all, chess and jazz and cigars and even fine wines (and all of their respective trappings) are ubiquitous in his home. A few of his favorite albums are artfully displayed on his living room walls, while others are meticulously …

This is a story about children.
Erin Pringle was little more than a child when we first met, during a summer fiction writing workshop at ISU in 1999. She was 17 at the time, still attending high school in Casey, Ill., and had decided to take a college-level fiction workshop, with her mother’s blessing.
Back then, Pringle approached the writing process with the wonder and intensity of a determined youngster. She attacked the page the way so many children face down an obstacle or a challenge — she steeled her jaw, fixed …