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From the newly published to the invaluable classic, our list of essential books for creative writers.
In this collection of essays, literary critic and poet Adam Kirsch expounds on such wide-ranging subjects as Saul Bellow, Slavoj Žižek, Giacomo Leopardi, and Susan Sontag. The eponymous essay that anchors the collection manages to touch on writing, oblivion, and the fundamental contradictions of a literary life.
Roy Peter Clark, senior scholar at the Poynter Institute and the author of seventeen books on writing and journalism, examines the work of more than twenty-five writers, including Ernest Hemingway, Zora Neale Hurston, Shirley Jackson, William Shakespeare, and Donna Tartt, to reveal the strategies and techniques deployed in examples of great literature. With lessons at the end of each chapter serving as insightful summaries of the methods explored in the text, The Art of X-Ray Reading demonstrates how in-depth reading can ultimately inform and transform the process of authoritative writing.
This compilation of interviews, essays, and anecdotes written by and about the students and teachers at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in the 1970s is full of wise and entertaining bits of advice and inspiration. Authors such as T. C. Boyle, Sandra Cisneros, Allan Gurganus, and Joy Harjo share insights about the workshop community and personal stories about their publishing histories and writing habits.
In this volume of five personal essays by Marguerite Duras, translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti, topics range from the death of a fly to a painter's exhibition. Duras explores the experiences that inspired her to write and shares her perspectives on the relationships between memory, writing, and solitude.
"Inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic, striving, but it comes to us slowly and quietly and all the time." First published in 1938, Brenda Ueland's classic book is a guide for writers at all levels offering insight to the writing process and the artist's identity. Ueland encourages all to find their creative center and provides spirited advice on how to channel creativity during happy, idle time spent ruminating and imagining.
With an introduction by Fredson Bowers, Nabokov’s collection of discussions on Russian classics by such greats as Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov are driven by a personal perspective. Speaking as an exile, Nabokov is especially dedicated to bringing to life the language and culture of the bygone Imperial Russia he once knew and loved.
With an introduction by John Updike, The Writer's Desk showcases Jill Krementz's black-and-white portraits of over fifty well-known writers from the latter half of the twentieth century, such as Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Pablo Neruda, Susan Sontag, and Kurt Vonnegut, at work on their craft. Emerging and established writers alike will be inspired and fascinated by the photos of the authors, which are accompanied by their own descriptions on individual creative routines and spaces.
The author of the best-selling memoir Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia (Viking, 2006) offers a transformative nonfiction treatise on creativity in which she explains where inspiration comes from, how ideas form and develop, and how to overcome the fear of pushing beyond one's comfort zone to create something new.
This anthology, which collects contemporary essays by writers such as Eula Biss, Wayne Koestenbaum, Lia Purpura, and David Shields, demonstrates the range and expansion of the creative nonfiction genre with a selection of exploratory pieces, all pushing the boundaries of form and expectation.
As part of Graywolf’s "Art of" series, award-winning poet Carl Phillips presents seven lyric essays about the importance of taking risks when making art. Through the examination of poems by Ashbery, Bogan, Frost, Niedecker, Shakespeare, and others, Phillips shows the ways in which poetry allows us to explore our humanity.
Gary Soto's memoir takes the form of over sixty short essays filled with insightful and humorous observations and wisdom gained from his experiences as a poet: giving readings, confronting award nominations and journal acceptances and rejections, and struggling daily with his craft. Soto reflects on both the role and status of the writer in society, and his personal trajectory as a poet.
Eric Maisel draws upon his extensive experience as a creativity coach, psychotherapist, and author of over forty books to guide readers through the steps it takes to create the most inspiring and productive space—both physical and mental—for writing. Maisel's practical advice helps writers identify their creative impulses and transform their habits by implementing focus and an organized schedule to their writing lives.
This volume collects twenty-two conversations from five years of interviews originally published in the Believer. The often irreverent exchanges between authors such as Don DeLillo with Bret Easton Ellis, Mary Gaitskill with Sheila Heti, and Joan Didion with Vendela Vida reveal insights into their personalities and experiences—both writing-related and not.
In these trenchant and whimsical lectures, Nabokov taps into the craft behind such European classics as Madame Bovary, Bleak House, and Ulysses. With an introduction by John Updike, this collection includes lectures as valuable for their content as they are for their delivery.
"I've learned that being creative is a full-time job with its own daily patterns. That's why writers, for example, like to establish routines for themselves." Choreographer Twyla Tharp explains how creativity comes from the willingness to work hard and make it a habit. The book includes thirty-two practical exercises to inspire people across the creative spectrum to become more productive.
In the ten essays comprising this collection, Jane Hirshfield explores a wide range of elements that give poetry its transformative power. From examinations of work by poets including Bashō, Elizabeth Bishop, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Czeslaw Miłosz, to investigations of paradox and surprise in poetry, Hirshfield demonstrates the ability of poetry to gift its readers with "new possibilities of perceiving."
The author of the memoirs The Liars’ Club (Viking, 1995), Cherry (Viking, 2000), and Lit (Harper, 2009) draws from decades of experience as a writer, reader, and teacher to spotlight this complex and powerful form of storytelling. “Memoir done right is an art, a made thing,” she writes in the preface. Including unique insights and examples of the author’s personal favorites in the genre, The Art of Memoir provides a humorously candid examination of the literary form Karr has influenced over the past twenty years.
John Drury’s Creating Poetry is a straightforward, comprehensive guide to writing verse. In sections such as “Preparing,” “Sight,” “Movement,” and “Sources of Inspiration,” Drury walks readers through his taxonomy of poetry and process from inspiration to completion, with plenty of examples, prompts, and challenges along the way.
“A writer is, first and last, a reader." Patricia Hampl's collection of essays explores the depths of writing created from the most personal memories—in works by Anne Frank, Czeslaw Milosz, Sylvia Plath, Walt Whitman, and others—and provides insightful reflections on her own writing life as a memoirist.
"I wrote the book I wished I had had in my poetry writing classes," Natasha Sajé writes in the preface. Her nine essays serve as an insightful guide to reading and writing poetry in a way that takes into consideration critical theory, as well as the politics and ideology of poetic language. The included works of contemporary poets provide examples for inspiring writing prompts for poets at all levels.
"This book... is intended to cover the writing process from the first moment you decide, or dream, that you want to write, on through to the third month after publication of your first novel." Author, teacher, and critic Carolyn See guides writers through everything from the basic elements of writing a story, to how to behave around friends and family when you first get published, and emphasizes the importance of sending a daily “charming note.”
“The judgment that a work is complete...can be made rightly only by a writer who's learned to read her own work.” In this new update of Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1998 handbook, writers will learn how to read and revise their own work following a discussion of the basic components of prose. The ten chapters cover everything from punctuation to point of view, and are interspersed with examples from classic works of literature and writing exercises that put into practice Le Guin’s tips on craft.
"All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time." This book is a collection of Ernest Hemingway's comments on writing and reflections about his own process, gathered from his stories, essays, letters, and interviews. Hemingway's insights offer helpful advice to writers on the craft of writing, work habits, and the writing life.
In Dear Mister Essay Writer Guy, Dinty W. Moore answers a collection of questions about essay writing from essayists such as Roxane Gay, Phillip Lopate, David Shields, and Cheryl Strayed. Moore expands on topics ranging from larger themes of privacy to the minute particularities of the em dash with humorous and insightful advice, illustrative examples, and writing prompts.
"This collection is founded on the idea that it's worth trying to write about race, again—in particular that something valuable happens when an individual writer reflects on race in the making of creative work." In 2011 Claudia Rankine created Open Letter, an online forum about race and the art of writing that elicited responses from a diverse group of artists and writers. In this anthology, authors such as Simone White, Francisco Aragón, Bhanu Kapil, Dawn Lundy Martin, and many others offer their responses, filled with their own experiences, questions, and convictions. The result is a vital conversation on a range of topics including depictions of social and racial identity; race, feminism, and creative spaces; and "the white imaginary."
