DeFrees is a published writer and an editor with a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Virginia and a law degree from the University of Texas. In the following essay, DeFrees discusses Irish author Anne Devlin's shifting use of time to create foreshadowing in her short story.

Like a dream or an unsolved mystery, Anne Devlin's story, "Naming the Names," demands that her readers fill in the blanks. Devlin creates suspense through the omission of detail, by flipping back and forth through time, offering eddies of information that must be parsed together to understand the full picture. She does not bury the reader in detail; instead, she hints at the historical background of the play, allowing it to frame the story with a whisper. It is a subtle telling of a tale, in which every instance of dialogue, each seemingly innocuous detail of a person...