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"In (Don't) Stop Me If You've Heard This Before, Peter Turchi combines personal narrative and close reading of a wide range of stories and novels to reveal how writers create the fiction that matters to us. Building on his much-loved Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer, Turchi leads readers and writers to an understanding of how the intricate mechanics of storytelling-including shifts in characters' authority, the subtle manipulation...
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Born in Prague when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire and recognized today as a master of verse, poet Rainer Maria Rilke was considerably less well known in 1902 when he received a heartfelt letter from an aspiring poet. A 19-year-old student sent Rilke some of his verses, seeking an opinion of their worth. Rilke declined to offer a critique, instead encouraging the student to rely upon his own inner judgment: "Nobody can advise and help...
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Don't write merely to shock. People are used to shock-horror. You need to get beneath the skin. Use a flensing knife and keep it sharp. It's good to shock, but only as part of the story you tell.
In these essays, Kaaron Warren-the Shirley Jackson Award-winning writer behind “Slights”, “The Greif Hole”, and “Into Bones Like Oil”, explores the craft and philosophy of trapping dark and disturbing fiction on the page.
Drawn from essays,...
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Lexile measure
880L
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English
Description
"For nonwriters, it is a glimpse into the trials and satisfactions of a life spent with words. For writers, it is a warm, rambling, conversation with a stimulating and extraordinarily talented colleague." — Chicago Tribune
From Pulitzer Prize-winning Annie Dillard, a collection that illuminates the dedication and daring that characterizes a writer's life.
In these short essays, Annie Dillard—the
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In this anthology from the Villa Gillet literary conference, world-renowned authors from A.S. Byatt to Enrique Vila-Matas discuss their work.
At the international literary conference hosted by Villa Gillet and Le Monde, organizers asked more than seventy prominent authors to choose a word that opens a door to their work. Their musings, collected here and organized alphabetically by keyword, present an array of intriguing, amusing, and surprising...
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More than 30 acclaimed writers-including diverse voices such as Nikki Giovanni, David Omotosho Black, Natasha Trethewey, Barry Jenkins, Jacqueline Woodson, Tayari Jones, and Angela Flournoy-reflect on their experience and expertise in this unique book on the craft of writing that focuses on the Black creative spirit.
How We Do It is an anthology curated by Black writers for the creation and proliferation of Black thought. While a creator's ethnicity...
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Personal reflections on the vital role of the notebook in creative writing, from Dorianne Laux, Sue Grafton, John Dufresne, Kyoko Mori, and more.
This collection of essays by established professional writers explores how their notebooks serve as their studios and workshops-places to collect, to play, and to make new discoveries with language, passions, and curiosities. For these diverse writers, the journal also serves as an ideal forum to develop...
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In Ex Marginalia, 20 authors of speculative fiction explore what it means to create at the intersections of their multiple marginalities. A gay man pens a letter to his departed muse, an African woman ruminates on the end of a marriage, a Filipino writer defends romantic villains.These essays chart identities and perspectives systematically excluded by a field that has failed to deliver on its promise of progress. But these voices cannot-will not-remain...
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Teachers, exercises, mentors, critiques, humor, and inspiration: these form the fuel all writers need, when they get down to work every day. For decades, the Loft Literary Center has provided this fuel to an enormous community of writers. Views from the Loft brings together the collected wisdom of that community- its authors, students, and editors- giving anyone the tools and inspiration necessary to thrive in the writing life.
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A moving and inspiring anthology of masterful essays on stories that touch the hearts and minds of readers.
"A writer," Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow once said, "is a reader who is moved to emulation." New York Times bestselling novelist and memoirist Andre Dubus III took that idea and invited acclaimed authors to write about short stories that altered their view of life and their place in it-short stories that, ultimately, made them want to write...
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Embark on an enchanting journey into the heart of fantasy world building with "Magic Made Easy." This beginner's guide is your key to unlocking the secrets of creating captivating and unique magical and mythical worlds. In this comprehensive guide, you'll explore the art of crafting a fantasy universe, from the foundational principles of originality to the intricate details of magic and mythology. Designed for both newcomers and seasoned writers,...
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"This book is a collection of 30 essays, meditative and formally inventive, that consider all kinds of subjects (keys, hats, Bell's Palsy), the memoir, writing, the essay itself, and Michael Martone's friendship with writers David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, and Kurt Vonnegut. The theme of the book is the emergence and incorporation of new technologies that the essay can try. Several of the pieces were written specifically for online venues...
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Writers of the modern essay can trace their chosen genre all the way back to Michel de Montaigne (1533-92). But save for the recent notable best seller How to Live: A Life of Montaigne by Sarah Bakewell, Montaigne is largely ignored. After Montaigne-a collection of twenty-four new personal essays intended as tribute-aims to correct this collective lapse of memory and introduce modern readers and writers to their stylistic forebear.
Though it's been...
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The struggle to write with deep emotion is the subject of this extraordinary book, the previously unpublished credo of one of America's greatest 20th-century writers.
"You don't write a novel out of sheer pity any more than you blow a safe out of a vague longing to be rich," writes Nelson Algren in his only longer work of nonfiction, adding: "A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is...
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A fresh and provocative picture of what it means to create literature, this collection of Steven Heighton's notes to himself as he writes peeks into the mind of an acclaimed author. The short pieces reveal Heighton's pointed, cutting take on his own work and materialize the musings and meditations that come to him as he scribbles. Offering new perspectives and insights into the creative process, this wholly original book shows what lies outside the...
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May Sarton's lifetime of work as a poet, novelist, and essayist inform these illuminating reflections on the creative life In "The Book of Babylon," May Sarton remarks that she is not a critic-except of her own work. The essay addresses questions that have haunted Sarton's own creative practice, such as the concept of "tension in equilibrium"-balancing past and present, idea and image. She also cites poems written by others to describe the joy...
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A diverse collection of essays and companion interviews that offer insight into the inspiration, drafting, and revision process.
With a title that suggests both the genre and the process of composing it, Creating Nonfiction is a collection of essays and interviews that aims to open readers' and writers' eyes to the formal possibilities of creative nonfiction. Included are memoirs, personal essays, literary journalism, graphic essays, and lyric essays,...
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"Great description shakes us. It fills our lungs with the life of its author." Painted Paragraphs, the second in a series of inspirational guides for writers and readers, is author Donald Newlove's witty, insightful, and very personal selection of the best descriptive passages in literature. Beginning with Ernest Hemingway's dinner of oysters and wine in A Moveable Feast, Newlove moves on to give us the contents of Mildred's cupboard in Terry McMillan's...
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