Best Books for Writers

“Instinct alone isn’t enough. To produce a work of art, technique must also be brought to bear. When instinct and technique merge seamlessly, I call the result cunning,” writes Peter Selgin, author and professor at Georgia College & State University, in this craft book “for serious writers of all levels.” The comprehensive guide includes practical advice and exemplary passages that cover essential elements of the writing process from inspiration and ideas, to point of view and dialogue, to structure and revision.  

In this intergenerational collection, contemporary poets of multiple languages and lands illuminate the meaning of the Asian American and Pacific Islander identity. Contributors to this anthology divided into five sections—“Talk Story,” “Mourn,” “Pronounce,” “Fight,” and “Love”—include Marilyn Chin, Sarah Gambito, Sarah Kay, Ed Bok Lee, David Mura, Joshua Nguyen, Patrick Rosal, Teresia Teaiwa, Haunani-Kay Trask, and Shelley Wong. “Gathered from a range of contemporary schools and movements, these poems move, push, pulse,” write the editors in the introduction. “They are alive: gathered heat, heat gathering, and gathered into a motely but—we must insist—beautiful We.” 

“Memory is rarely whole or factually correct.... What we remember is a reconstruction of image and feeling that suits our needs and purposes.” Author and psychotherapist Maureen Murdock begins this two-part book by exploring the mutability of memory and its powerful connection to identity, drawing upon her own experiences with a mother struggling with Alzheimer’s disease and examining works of memoir by authors, such as Isabel Allende, J. M. Coetzee, and Mary Karr. The second part of the book acts as a primer guiding writers through the practical elements of craft with writing exercises and chapters including “Getting Started,” “Universality,” and “Emotional Truth and the Voice of the Narrator.”  

This handbook is an engaging primer on the art of writing flash fiction. David Galef covers the origins, evolution, and subcategories of the form that include vignettes, prose poems, character sketches, fables, lists, twist stories, surrealism, and metafiction. Each chapter is full of practical tips, techniques, and editing strategies specific to flash fiction, as well as inspiring prompts and exemplary stories by authors, such as Donald Barthelme, Colette, Roxane Gay, Yusef Komunyakaa, Bharati Mukherjee, Sei Shōnagon, Alice Walker, and John Edgar Wideman. “Writing so that every word counts makes for powerful, memorable work,” writes Galef.  

From explorations of St. Teresa of Avila and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, to George Sand, W. E. B. Du Bois, Virginia Woolf, and Frank McCourt, author and scholar Jill Ker Conway writes an in-depth investigation of memoir writing, tracing its evolution and shedding light on how autobiographical storytelling reflects cultural context and is shaped by social forces, such as gender roles. “Can anyone be both subject and object of the same sentences—the speaker and the subject spoken about?” asks Conway. Throughout the chapters in this book, Conway presents memoir as a powerful form that fosters understanding—illuminating perceptions of the past and providing instructions and insights for the future.   

Drawing inspiration from the principles of method acting, John Dufresne’s The Lie That Tells a Truth demystifies the writing process and covers the basics of the craft, including how to invent characters, develop a voice, and revise work. Through literary analysis of the works of Anton Chekhov, Frank O’Connor, Eudora Welty, and others, as well as sets of writing exercises for each chapter, Dufresne creates a practical and comprehensive guide with steps on how to become a confident storyteller. As Dufresne writes in the introduction, “No one else can or will give you permission to write, so don’t even ask.” 

In this collection of essays, the former director of the Bennington Writing Seminars and the coeditor of the journal Agni reflects on “the old questions, the good questions, the old Heideggerian questions that seem so very basic on the surface, but then you get caught in the implications and realize that they go on and on and that you’ll only go crazy trying to answer them.” Chief among Birkerts’s interrogations is what it means to be a writer today, when so many other mediums compete for an audience. Meditating on smartphones, photography, Jorge Luis Borges, Bob Dylan, and more, Birkerts offers writing— “the right words in the right order”—as a pathway through an increasingly complex labyrinth.  

In this book of craft essays and exercises, coauthor of The Poet’s Companion and renowned poet Dorianne Laux offers an invitation to poets to practice and engage with the art of poetry. Laux begins by exploring the reasons she writes poetry, and each section after tackles a variety of subjects, including the syllable and the line, form, imagination, and voice. With examples from classic and contemporary poets, as well as approachable prompts and exercises throughout the book, Laux guides poets through the ways in which she practices poetry. “I like moving, word by word, toward a sense of discovery, toward an awareness of self, a curious, energetic, intelligent, humorous, sacred, baffling, heartful self,” writes Laux. “I live for that flaring up of language, when the words actually carry me, envelop me, grip me.” 

In this installment of the Why I Write series, based on Yale University’s Windham-Campbell Lectures, Greil Marcus explores the power and mystery of art and writing. The music journalist, cultural critic, and coeditor of the anthology A New Literary History of America (Belknap Press, 2009), examines his love of writing through three significant influences—his childhood haunted by the silence around his father’s death, his discovery of the film critic Pauline Kael, and an encounter with a sixteenth-century painting by Italian painter Titian. Through each section of the book, Marcus reflects on what makes writing so captivating, distinctive, and necessary. “Writing is rooted in memory: in some alchemy of responses, particular to everyone, with no one’s translation of life the same,” writes Marcus. “I write to discover what I want to say and how to say it—and the nerve to say it.” 

In this edition of The Best American Poetry, which has been published annually since 1988, guest editor Mary Jo Salter selects poems from seventy-five poets published in literary journals and poetry collections in 2023. The anthology celebrates a wide range of established poets as well as newcomers to the series, including Kim Addonizio, Ama Codjoe, Armen Davoudian, Rita Dove, Marie Howe, Omotara James, Maya C. Popa, Arthur Sze, Claire Wahmanholm, and Kevin Young. In her introduction to the volume, the former poetry editor of the New Republic and coeditor of three editions of The Norton Anthology of Poetry notes her inclination in choosing longer poems with exception for the late Louise Glück’s three-line poem “Passion and Form.” Salter writes: “The business of poets, I would argue, includes at least some of these aspirations: to witness the world, including the layered, shifting moods of their own minds’ interiors; to feel deeply and also to think through their feelings; to experience life with all of the senses…to dare to remain uncertain and paradoxical and inconclusive as life itself, while also making a finished ‘thing,’ a poem, of beauty.”

Drawn from twenty years of her career, Like Love is a collection of essays and conversations by Maggie Nelson, the author of iconic books, including Bluets (Wave Books, 2009) and The Argonauts (Graywolf Press, 2015). The profiles, reviews, tributes, critical essays, and conversations with artists are arranged chronologically and range from subjects, such as Björk, Lhasa de Sela, Fred Moten, Alice Notley, Prince, and Kara Walker. Nelson’s insights and development as a writer shine through as she tackles themes of intergenerational exchange, love and friendship, feminist and queer issues, the roles of the critic and of language, and the rewards and trials of creating art. “Language doesn’t always make me happy. But sometimes, you must explain,” writes Nelson in the preface. “And not just because someone asked, or because we live in a culture of explanation, but because one wants to. Needs to. The language rises up, an upchuck. Words aren’t just what’s left; they’re what we have to offer.”