Best Books for Writers

​This pioneering anthology provides a thorough examination of eight different hybrid genres in contemporary literature: epistolary, flash fiction, ​lyric essay, performative, pictures made of words, poetic memoir, prose poetry, and short-form nonfiction. Readers and writers new to or experienced with hybrid forms will appreciate the exploratory scope of craft essays and exemplary work by forty-three authors including Jenny Boully, Terrance Hayes, Takashi Hiraide, Etgar Keret, and Maggie Nelson.

In this classic 1978 book of essays in the University of Michigan Press's Poets on Poetry series, William Stafford explores the craft of writing as a process of discovery, and encourages writers to think deeply and to keep an open mind. Readers will be inspired by Stafford's clear and direct approach to being patient and welcoming of new ideas and creative modes.

For this collection of more than a dozen essays on creative nonfiction, editors Sean Prentiss and Joe Wilkins requested a wide range of contributing writers, including Joy Castro, Brenda Miller, and Dinty W. Moore, to explore their own questions about the definitions and boundaries of the genre. Beginning and experienced writers, as well as those simply curious to learn more about these writers' perspectives, will find inspiring new ways to challenge and deepen their understanding of the art of personal essay and memoir.

From the author of the quintessential writers handbook Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within—a thirtieth-anniversary edition of which was also published by Shambhala in February—comes a collection of twenty-two essays about what it takes to have a long writing life. The "great spring" of the title refers to "the great rush of energy that arrives when you think no life will ever come again." Drawing from decades of writing, teaching, and practicing Zen, Goldberg shares the experiences through which she found herself and her voice.

Less a digest on technique, form, or reading, poet Glyn Maxwell’s On Poetry is an extended, lyrical meditation on what makes poetry tick from within—think more organism than machine. As funny as it is surprising, the book moves through chapters with titles like “Pulse,” “Chime,” and “Space,” striking with simplicity and clarity at some of the fundamental elements of poetry’s greatness.

The product of fifteen years directing Whitman College's Visiting Writers Reading Series, Katrina Roberts has gathered into one anthology the wisdom shared by the authors who have joined the series. The volume collects tips and wisdom, confessions and secrets, and inspiration and prompts from over eighty poets, fiction writers, and memoirists.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.