A freelance writer and copyeditor, Faulkner is pursuing an M.A. in English at Wayne State University. In the essay below, he offers a thoughtful exploration of how the writer's experience melds with the crafting of fiction, specifically in "Wunderkind."

In the early 1930s, a Columbus, Georgia, teenager named Lula Carson Smith was bitterly disappointed in her artistic ambitions. While some of the details of her experience are disputed, its basic outlines are clear: Long considered a musical prodigy, having trained for years as a concert pianist and prepared to enter New York's famous Julliard School, she suddenly gave up music entirely and began devoting her energies to a writing career. Her first published work was "Wunderkind," written at age 19, originally for a college writing course. The story concerns a young woman's final, emotional piano lesson, in which she realizes that the musical calling she had hoped...