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From the newly published to the invaluable classic, our list of essential books for creative writers.
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.
"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."
In What It Is, Lynda Barry provides imaginative advice and playful instruction in the form of writing exercises, collages, personal anecdotes, and drawings. The book offers inspiration for both experienced writers who are searching for a new perspective on the roles of imagery and memory in creative writing, and those who are looking for accessible guidance on how to begin and maintain a regular writing practice.
In this book, Phillip Lopate, director of the nonfiction graduate program at Columbia University, explores topics as diverse as "On the Ethics of Writing About Others," and "The Personal Essay in the Age of Facebook.” Lopate also examines master essayists, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and James Baldwin, to demonstrate how concepts of nonfiction writing have been put into practice.
"The book that you hold in your hands does not contain a set of rules but something quite different—what we might call a set of approaches." In this collection of essays, seventeen authors, including Margot Livesey, Richard Russo, Jim Shepard, and Joan Silber, dispense insightful guidance and personal anecdotes to inspire writers at all stages of their craft.
"It is the intimacy of poetry that makes our art such a beautiful recourse," Donald Revell states in The Art of Attention. Drawing upon writers such as Samuel Beckett, John Cage, Ann Lauterbach, and Denise Levertov, Revell presents a case for the transcendent possibilities of poetry, and guides readers to an understanding of the links between the creative reading and creative writing processes.
The first volume of the Glimmer Train Guide to Writing Fiction series collects excerpts from over a hundred interviews by authors including Sandra Cisneros, Jamaica Kincaid, and Tobias Wolff. In short passages, writers share their thoughts on topics such as plot, theme, and dialogue, all conveniently divided by chapters.
Stephen Koch, former chair of Columbia University’s graduate creative writing program, presents indispensable advice covering all the basics of craft in this comprehensive volume. Starting from the moment of inspiration, to writing a first draft, to techniques for character development and plot, this book offers insight and guidance for writers at every stage.
In this wide-ranging anthology of essays, former Iowa Writers' Workshop director Frank Conroy has compiled twenty-three pieces written by faculty about the craft of writing. Authors such as Deborah Eisenberg, Francine Prose, and Abraham Verghese share their insights and tips on the writing and revision processes.
For more than fifty years, the Paris Review has conducted interviews with some of the world's most notable writers of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama. This first volume collects sixteen interviews which are full of insight about the writing lives of authors such as Elizabeth Bishop, Ernest Hemingway, and Rebecca West.
Teacher and memoirist Judith Barrington offers practical advice drawn from years of personal experience on how to overcome difficulties, and take risks when writing your own memoir. The guide covers everything from questions about truth and ethics to craft, and each chapter concludes with writing exercises.
Poet and teacher Steve Kowit provides guidance for aspiring poets on crafting modern poetry, as well as for more practiced poets looking to hone their technical skills. The book reads like a lecture with more than a hundred poems and excerpts to illustrate his discussions.
Veteran “prose goddess” Mary Norris brings to the desk over three decades of experience in the New Yorker’s copy department. In her first book, Norris addresses the most common slipups in spelling, punctuation, and usage and provides anecdotal musings on the rules we write by, with examples from Moby-Dick to The Simpsons.
Clive James examines the poems and legacies of twentieth-century poets, from Hart Crane to Ezra Pound, and offers guidance on how to read and appreciate modern poetry. James also discusses his favorites (Yeats, Frost, Auden, Wilbur, and Larkin) and champions the opinion that poetry is for everyone, not just poets.
This book collects 244 of the wordplays and neologisms featured in Lizzie Skurnick's "That Should Be a Word" column in the New York Times Magazine. The terms, including twiticule, to mock someone in 140 characters, and brattle, to discuss one's children at great length, poke fun at life in the twenty-first century.
In this volume of collected essays, poet and critic David Biespiel offers profound and entertaining analyses of the mysteries of poetry and the role poetry plays in American life. Biespiel discusses the work of nearly one hundred poets from ancient times to the present, in English and in translation.
The seventh in the Writers' and Artists' series of books on writing provides an introduction to the forms and history of the novel, and contains tips from authors including Louise Doughty, Jonathan Franzen, and Philip Pullman. The book offers practical advice on writing and editing your own novel, as well as how to find an agent and publisher.
