In The Practice, The Horizon, and The Chain, Sofia Samatar crafts a narrative that refuses easy hierarchies of heroism or victimhood. Each character navigates degrees of subjugation, grasping for agency that flickers and shifts rather than shines steady. Rather than any frontal assault on the system, the story dwells in subtle interactions—quiet negotiations, cautious gestures, murmured myths—that reveal how even in oppressive conditions, delicate designs of self-determination can take root.

Everett's James stands as an invitation and a provocation—to tell stories that do not seek approval but instead hold a mirror to power and fracture its image. The craft lessons embedded here are less about technique and more about disposition: a willingness to interrogate, to disrupt, to complicate. When we write, may we do so with the courage to break language open, to saturate our narratives with all that history demands, and to let the unresolved linger—as the jagged truth of an unforgiving world. Everett’s work reminds us that the role of the writer is not just to tell stories, but to shake the foundations upon which those stories stand. In that shaking, we find, perhaps, the only hope for change.

In Fathers and Fugitives, SJ Naudé refuses the comfort of resolution. Instead, he invites us into a world where identity, belonging, and relationships remain forever in flux—haunted by what could have been but never was. For writers, the lesson lies in the power of leaving things unsaid, of allowing fragments to stay fragmented, and of letting discomfort linger. The novel becomes a testament to the haunting nature of incomplete arcs, fractured identities, and relationships that never fully resolve.