This open access collection of essays examines the literary advice industry since its emergence in Anglo-American literary culture in the mid-nineteenth century within the context of the professionalization of the literary field and the continued debate on creative writing as art and craft. Often dismissed as commercial and stereotypical by authors and specialists alike, literary advice has nonetheless remained a flourishing business, embodying the unquestioned values of a literary system, but also functioning as a sign of a literary system in transition. Exploring the rise of new online amateur writing cultures in the twenty-first century, this collection of essays considers how literary advice proliferates globally, leading to new forms and genres.

How do narratives draw on our memory capacity? How is our attention guided when we are reading a literary narrative? What kind of empathy is triggered by intercultural novels? A cast of international scholars explores these and other questions from an interdisciplinary perspective in Stories and Minds, a collection of essays that discusses cutting-edge research in the field of cognitive narrative studies. Recent findings in the philosophy of mind and cognitive psychology, among other disciplines, are integrated in fresh theoretical perspectives and illustrated with accompanying analyses of literary fiction. Pursuing such topics as narrative gaps, mental simulation in reading, theory of mind, and folk psychology, these essays address fundamental questions about the role of cognitive processes in literary narratives and in narrative comprehension. Stories and Minds reveals the rich possibilities for research along the nexus of narrative and mind.