Best Books for Writers

“Modernist poetry’s reputation for difficulty leads many readers to overlook the fact that poets of the modern era are continually joking, mocking, and making puns,” Rachel Trousdale writes in the introduction to this book highlighting humor. In this collection of ten essays, professors and scholars of modern poetry discuss humor as a “structurally central” and “constitutive part” of poetry citing work by Elizabeth Bishop, Phyllis McGinley, Marianne Moore, Ezra Pound, and others. The essays focus on the different ways humor can connect, alienate, push boundaries, or demonstrate how a writer approaches a particular audience.

Published in hardcover by Knopf last May, the bestselling novelist’s essay collection, now in a paperback edition, contains insights into Russo’s life as a writer, teacher, and reader. While the nine pieces that make up the collection hold the same warmth, generosity, compassion, and humor that have drawn readers to his previous books, including the novels Everybody’s Fool and That Old Cape Magic and the memoir Elsewhere, it is Russo’s insightful record of the writing life, with all the usual markers of rejection, failure, revision, and hard work, as well as his sober take on the business of publishing that are the real draw for writers.

This book comprises an engaging selection of interviews published in Loyola University’s New Orleans Review from 1968 to 2018. Writers of all genres will be inspired by discussions with twenty-four authors and activists—including John Ashbery, James Baldwin, Susan Bernofsky, Jorge Luis Borges, Sheila Heti, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Anaïs Nin, and Eudora Welty—who share their unique perspectives on a wide range of topics covering the aesthetic and social aspects of writing. 

It may be a cliché, but “practice makes perfect” remains a solid approach to improving one’s skills as a writer, and John Warner’s book on craft offers organic, interactive, and relevant strategies for doing just that. The author of five books, including the novel The Funny Man (Soho Press, 2011); a contributing writer for Inside Higher Ed; a columnist for the Chicago Tribune; and a writing teacher with more than twenty years of experience at the college level, Warner takes the reader step by step through the process of writing nonfiction by dissecting key concepts such as audience, tone, and revision, offering inspiring writing exercises along the way.

Each of the ten sections of this book edited by poet Diane Lockward focuses on a poetic concept, covering topics including diction, etymology, sound, tone, point of view, and revision. There are thirty micro craft essays by acclaimed poets such as Natasha Sajé, Maggie Smith, and Diane Seuss, each in turn followed by writing prompts and model poems. The craft pointers provide a helpful review and challenge for writers wishing to push beyond the basics, and the Top Tips lists are compiled by poets who share their most inspiring words of advice and wisdom. 

Natalie Goldberg’s guide to the writing life begins on the first page with her rules for writing practice starting with: “Keep your hand moving.” The book goes on to relay numerous anecdotes, insights, lessons, and short writing exercise prompts gathered from over three decades of experience as a teacher of craft and meditation. “Trusting your own mind is essential for writing. Words come out of the mind,” Goldberg writes.

“When we write a personal narrative we find new meanings and, at the same time, we discover connections with our former selves. I think all writing constitutes an effort to establish our own meaningfulness, even in the midst of sadness and disappointment.” Jane Taylor McDonnell’s guide to the memoir form provides tips, strategies, and exercises that will inspire writers to excavate personal history and shape—and reshape—memories into powerful storytelling. Also included is a list of recommended reading.

“There is no such thing as being done with an artistic life. Frustrations and rewards exist at all levels on the path. Our aim here is to find the trail, establish our footing, and begin the climb.” In this twenty-fifth anniversary edition of The Artist’s Way, which includes a new introduction, Julia Cameron guides writers and artists through a twelve-week process of building and strengthening a creative life through the use of her two primary tools—the morning pages and the artist date—along with hundreds of inspiring exercises and activities.

H. K. Hummel and Stephanie Lenox introduce “writing that prioritizes brevity over page count, compression over expansion, and distillation of image and voice over development of plot and character” in this comprehensive book with helpful sections on narrative voice, time and space, sentence structure, logic, humor, revision, and other integral elements of craft specifically geared toward the short creative prose form. The guide is filled with writing exercises and prompts, and includes an anthology of over fifty exemplary short-form pieces by authors such as Matt Bell, Lydia Davis, Natalie Diaz, Amy Hempel, Jamaica Kincaid, Ada Limón, Justin Torres, and Ocean Vuong.

“This is not a book of theory. It is a book of usable solutions—how to fix writing that is flawed, how to improve writing that is good, how to create interesting writing in the first place.” In this practical and comprehensive book on writing prose, author and editor Sol Stein provides a guide through the essential concerns of craft: intentions, plotting, tension and suspense, dialogue, sensory description, revision, and more. The book covers both fiction and nonfiction, as well as overlapping elements, and is full of anecdotes and exemplary passages from other works of literature.

An acclaimed poet and critic who regularly writes reviews for the Los Angeles Times, NPR, and the New York Times Book Review, Craig Morgan Teicher assembles here a fascinating collection of essays that trace the poetic development of luminaries such as Sylvia Plath, John Ashbery, Louise Glück, W. S. Merwin, and francine j. harris, exploring how poets start out, how they learn to hear themselves, and how some of them are able to create works that stand the test of time. “I do hope,” Teicher writes, “that these investigations of various poets’ development offer other writers ways of thinking about how life and art—and how art and artists—affect one another.”

“Our writing is transformed and invigorated when we see writing as a process of being in ongoing relationship with the world beyond our own heads, and when we see language as the estuarial zone in which our own perceptions, the needs of our readers, and the realities of the external world mingle richly to create something new.” The Writer’s Eye is a guide to developing and strengthening writers’ observations of the physical world, an integral puzzle piece to powerful storytelling. Writers of all levels and genres will be inspired by dozens of writing exercises and sample texts interspersed throughout the book, which is organized into chapters focusing on topics such as neuroscience for writers, world-building, voice, and revision.