Montreal photographer Guillaume Simoneau never expected his art to take a turn toward the confessional. But his series Love and War, about a young US army sergeant's romantic life, reads as more than evidence of an affair, or one woman's coming of age—it finds its best poetry where it struggles to tell its own story.

George Saunders discusses his new short story collection, Tenth of December, the importance of public artists, and the possibility that fiction makes us better people.