Best Books for Writers

Three decades of writing and teaching culminate in this new craft book by Steve Almond, the author of a dozen books of fiction and nonfiction, including All the Secrets of the World (Zando, 2022) and the New York Times best-seller Against Football: One Fan’s Reluctant Manifesto (Melville House, 2014). With chapters dedicated to the basics—plot, character, chronology—the book makes space to interrogate “the comic impulse” and “obsession” as well as the more personal, intangible aspects of writing. Which feeling is stronger: your urge to tell the truth or your fear of the consequences? How can you write “egoless prose”? To answer questions like these, Almond layers anecdotes from his childhood alongside his experiences with writer’s block and his observations of students. In his candid, non-moralizing style, Almond examines writing from all angles, breathing new life into truisms about the writing process and the interior life of the storyteller. Read an excerpt from the book here.  

For over twenty years, student writers have been gathering at the Rainier Writing Workshop, Pacific Lutheran University’s low-residency MFA program in Tacoma, Washington, to learn from faculty such as Barrie Jean Borich, Geffrey Davis, and Oliver de la Paz, who deliver craft lectures on inspiring, innovative approaches to writing in the school’s Xavier Hall. In The Next Draft, fellow faculty member Brenda Miller collects nineteen of these “morning talks” by Jenny Johnson, Kent Meyers, Lia Purpura, and others. Together they explore everything from imagism and Jewish textual analysis to the long tradition of writing as an art and the unique position of the writer in the twenty-first century. “These talks often become the touchstone for our conversations throughout the residency,” writes Miller in the introduction. “We emerge from Xavier Hall excited about how to read literature differently and how to bring our own writing to a new level.” 

In this collection of essays, the late poet and editor Reginald Shepherd explores the transformative power of poetry in a selection of autobiographical essays and those that focus on the work of other writers, including Alvin Feinman, Jorie Graham, Samuel R. Delany, and Linda Gregg. Shepherd invites readers into his childhood and formation as a writer in a way that provides context for his critical and analytical writings. His achievements, both artistically and intellectually, are sure to impact any devotee of literature. “The essays gathered here range in topic from the autobiographical to the exegetical to the theoretical, in style from the narrative to the lyrical to the analytical,” writes Shepherd in the introduction. “What unifies them is a resolute defense of poetry’s autonomy, and a celebration of the liberatory and utopian possibilities such autonomy offers.” 

In The Hidden Machinery, award-winning novelist Margot Livesey looks to the authors and the works that have inspired her own writing. Each of the ten essays in this book is rooted in close readings of authors such as Jane Austen, Toni Morrison, Tom Stoppard, and Virginia Woolf, from whom Livesey draws invaluable lessons about rhythm in dialogue, the pitfalls of research, creating indelible characters, and much more about the inner workings of fiction. Within the essays are helpful prompts and tips on how to develop characters and sustain a narrative. “Read everything that is good for the good of your soul. Then learn to read as a writer, to search out that hidden machinery, which it is the business of art to conceal and the business of the apprentice to comprehend,” writes Livesey.  

In this anthology examining the connection between bodies in grief and bodies of poems edited by Lisa Fay Coutley, over seventy contemporary poets share their elegiac work alongside a micro-essay on their corresponding grief. A wide range of contributors working in a variety of styles and forms are included, such as Ruth Awad, Sandra Beasley, Victoria Chang, torrin a. greathouse, Jay Hopler, Ilya Kaminsky, Diane Seuss, Lynne Thompson, Eric Tran, and Phillip B. Williams. Rather than instruct on how to craft grief poems, this expansive collection seeks to explore the ways in which poets give voice to what is difficult to put into words, and how to grieve and heal through poetry. 

In Experiences in Translation, translated from the Italian by Alastair McEwen, novelist and scholar Umberto Eco argues that translation is about interpretation and connotation, and a shift between cultures. Based on a series of lectures on translation given by Eco in 1998, the first half of the book reflects on his personal experiences translating literature as well as having his work translated by others. Eco demonstrates how a translation can express a deep understanding of a text while violating both lexical and referential faithfulness, and how translation can be thought of as a semiotic task, using examples from translations of his own and other novels, translations of the dialogue of American films into Italian, and versions of the Bible. The second half of the book dives into translation theories proposed by Roman Jakobson, C. S. Pierce, George Steiner, and others. Anyone interested in language and literary translation will appreciate Eco’s approachable and thoughtful discussion. 

In Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life, novelist and memoirist Dani Shapiro offers wisdom, insights, and practical lessons drawn from her journey as a writer and teacher. “Everything I know about life, I learned from the daily practice of sitting down to write,” she writes. The book is a blend of personal stories, tales from other authors, and an examination of her own writing process, including insights on how she created her acclaimed novels and memoirs. This tenth anniversary edition, which includes a new forward from the author, is a testament to how valuable the lessons in this book have become for writers and teachers of creative writing.  

In Acetylene Torch Songs, Sue William Silverman mixes memoir and craft lessons to illustrate how a writer’s imagination creates metaphor, literary masks, sensory memories, and voice on the page. Utilizing twenty-five years of teaching experience, Silverman offers guided prompts, worksheets, checklists, publishing advice, personal essays, and strategies to encourage writers at any stage to find the confidence to write their truths. Through instruction and inspiration, this book demonstrates the intersection of creativity, craft, and courage needed to write creative nonfiction. “This genre possesses double vision—the author’s ability to see a past experience joined with present awareness—thus heightening the intensity. Unlike real life, creative nonfiction is both microscopic and telescopic. It’s crucial to envision the smallest detail of a life while also presenting that detail in a way that reflects an entire world. Real life lacks metaphors. Creative nonfiction births them,” writes Silverman.  

In this craft book, authors and teachers Sharon Fagan McDermott and M. C. Benner Dixon encourage writers to treat writing as a form of play while walking through practical elements of creative writing. Each chapter includes a pair of essays-in-dialogue between the authors addressing subjects such as memory, imagery, surprise, inspiration, metaphor, and revision. The chapters also include writing prompts which encourage writers to tap into the freedom and joy that comes with finding one’s voice. “Through writing, our anxieties and self-doubt, our trauma and our regret, our dearest memories and our fondest hopes, are transformed, crafted, and revised,” write the authors. “We hope this book on writing reminds you of the power, the play, the joy of writing.” 

This collaborative study by authors Sofia Samatar and Kate Zambreno, written together under the name of the Committee to Investigate Atmosphere, seeks to examine the indefinable quality of tone in literary work. In seven chapters, the authors interrogate how tone might be defined through human and living beings, the spaces we inhabit, and through sound and feel and our other senses. They write: “A tone is perhaps a room that we inhabit and are inhabited by. It is the interior that surrounds and the exterior that invades. Something we must listen to, be attuned to, within the necessity of silence.” Lyrically written with a conversational tone, this creative criticism seeks knowledge and answers from creative and theoretical works, including translation, by writers such as Paul Laurence Dunbar, Saidiya Hartman, Nella Larsen, Fred Moten, and Sianne Ngai. The authors pose lingering questions throughout the book about the power of atmosphere in literature and how readers often return to books, not for the plot or characters, but to “breathe that air again.” 

In this guide to copyediting fiction from the publisher of The Chicago Manual of Style, veteran copyeditor Amy J. Schneider offers advice from her years of experience on how to deal with dialogue, voice, grammar, conscious language, blending fact and fiction, and other significant issues in writing fiction. Rather than a style guide or grammar text, Schneider intends the book to be “a road map for helping each author, character, and manuscript tell their own story in their own voice and their own style, clearly and consistently.” Divided into three parts with approachable thematic chapters, the book covers copyediting tasks specific to fiction, such as tracking the continuity of characters, places, and events, while providing solutions and suggestions on how to build a fiction style sheet. Although specific to fiction, poets and writers of other genres may find the book useful as a guide to self-editing before submission and a look into the work of copyeditors.